The Garden is located at 435 Oakview Road, at the corner of South McDonough Street and Oakview Road in Decatur, just southwest of Agnes Scott College. It is open to the public from sunup to sundown. Please see our “Visiting” page for the few rules that we ask you to follow while in The Garden.
The Garden is constantly evolving! We are currently working on constructing Wylde Woods, dedicated to our founder, Salley Wylde. Here are some of the established garden features:
Community Plots
The Garden has 32 plots available for people from the community to grow vegetables and flowers. Basic requirements to rent a plot at the Garden includes a non-refundable $65 plot fee, current Garden membership, and a commitment to give 16 community service hours back to the Garden. The plot year runs February 1-January 31. For more information or to be placed on the wait list, please contact our Gardener JC at JC@wyldecenter.org
Cobb Adobe House
We have a beautiful cobb playhouse! It is a favorite attraction for our young garden explorers. The name of this wonderful structure is Ox and it was made from the earth by Aviva Kessler and our outstanding volunteers.
Animals in the Garden
Our Chicken Coop
Team Chicken is a long running cooperative effort. Ten families care for the girls and divide up shifts and share the cost of feed and straw. Folks come twice a day to let the chickens out, feed them, close them up at night and collect eggs in exchange. Weekend coop-cleanings are also shared amongst the group.
Our coop is volunteer-built and it’s quite large at 8 ft x 5 ft x 6 ft. It’s up off the ground and has a slanted roof. It has a human door and a chicken door and two small sliding windows with screens. We have one laying box, but find the chickens don’t use it and lay on the floor of the coop in two favorite places. The hen house has a fenced in lot that’s about 350 square feet. We added a new adjacent apiary (bee yard) in March 2011 with three bee hives. The chickens love it. Birds and bees live together!
Many people ask us about what kind of chickens we have. Here is the run down: Buff Orpingtons (yellow ones), Rhode Island Red (red ones) , Silver-lace Wyandotte (black and white beautiful), Polish Hen (tuft of feathers on head), Barred Rock (small black and white.. we call her Sneezy because she sneezed a lot, we treated her and she survived. She’s EXTREMELY social now and will let folks pet her and will run out to greet you. Americaunas (black hens), Astralopes (black and brown)
The Birds & The Bees -Our Girls work together well. Previously, the bee hives were located near the compost at the back of the garden, but they were taken over by hive beetles. Three of the four hives died. The fourth hive, basically on life support, was placed into the chicken coop for the winter. The hive beetles and other pests went down into the ground around the hives as part of their life cycle; the hens gobble them up as snacks. We have three thriving hives now, thanks to this symbiotic relationship based on permaculture farming principles.
Thanks to Team Leader Clare Schexnyder of Oh Baby! Fitness www.ohbabyfitness.com
Our Bees
Our hives pollinate the garden and serve as a teaching tool for visitors, classes and camps. Our classes and camps offer hands on experience with feeding and caring for bees and with extracting delicious local honey from the hives. Visitors on Field trips get to taste the honey and learn about the benefits from bees from our staff. Our bees live with the chickens and thrive with the help of our beekeeper Cassandra Lawson and the Bee Team. You can get private consultation from Cassandra’s Bee Business called, Apiculture, by calling 678.431.5350
Pond
The pond was built in memory of Liz Chandler, an Agnes Scott College student who devoted many hours to creatures in the garden. Agnes Scott College, EcoWatch volunteers, and Emory students helped build the pond. Frogs have moved into the pond and are a constant source of enjoyment for the children who visit the garden.
Peace Pole
In 1997, the same year the garden was started, the garden was asked if it would like to plant a Peace Pole on its site. A Native American Shaman and Maori Medicine Man were present to dedicate the Peace Pole. As sage was burned, participants stood in a circle around the pole and were asked to share a thought. As Sally remembers it, the birds were especially loud that day joining in with the blessing of the Peace Pole.
Gardens for Peace
Dedicated on May 6, 2000, the designation of the Oakhurst Community Garden as a Garden for Peace marks the first site of its kind in the network.
Other gardens in the network are located at the Atlanta History Center, Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Botanical Garden in Madrid, Spain, Lakewold in Tacoma, Washington, Pastoral Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, Columbia Theological Seminary, and on the grounds of the Sarah P. Duke Garden.
The Gardens for Peace dedication included the presentation of a special banner made by the neighborhood Girl Scout Troop.
Special activities included building scarecrows for the garden beds, listening to a storyteller and an opportunity for the children to write down their wishes for peace and place them on a special tree.
Streambank
Oak Creek, a tributary to the West Shoal Creek runs through the garden property. The garden plans to restore the streambank using native trees, shrubs, and perennials to stabilize the bank. The Shoal Creek Watershed Alliance is a volunteer group that regularly monitors the water in the creek. In a recent survey of stream life, the group found small fish, salamanders, crayfish, flies, beetle larvae, and damselflie larvae.
Wheelchair Beds
The handicap accessible beds were designed by Don Hooten, a local landscape architect and built by Randy Lane and Marshall Davis.
Carnivorous Bog
In February 2005, Catherine Hartman formerly with the Atlanta Botanical Garden led a small group of folks through a bog building class. All the pitcher plants and other bog plants were donated to us from the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Come see the pitcher plants in bloom in late spring.
The Mural Project
In 2010, with the mural on the side of our garden house looking a bit faded, we began a collaborative effort to make our dreams of a more colorful garden space materialize. Zach Monette, one of our dedicated volunteers, got the ball rolling by seeking out artists in the community and working with Ace Hardware and Sherwin Williams to acquire paint supplies, which they very generously donated to the project. At the same time Andrea Zoppo, our fabulous Program Assistant, worked with Living Walls and found an artist named Shaun Thurston who could paint our garden wall as a part of their 2010 national conference in Atlanta. Armed with a vision and a can of spray paint, Shaun set to work on a mural which highlights the garden’s urban beekeeping practices, and the importance of bees to gardens in general. As Shaun jokingly said, “From a distance, it looks as though the house is being carried on the back of a worker bee.”
[...] was introduced to Oakhurst Community Garden which was close to where I was working at the time in Decatur, Georgia. An avid organic [...]