The particle garden

Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

Mesons. Bosons. Pions. Muons. Asparagus. Yes, asparagus. Physicists have spare time, too, and a few of them spend it in Fermilab's Garden Club, with roots almost as old as the lab itself. It was 1969 when farm manager Bob Hines began allocating land to Fermilab users and employees for recreational gardening. Now the Garden Club boasts nearly 90 members, growing everything from sweet corn to strawberries. "As long as it's legal, people grow just about anything," says Computing Division's Eileen Berman, a club member for over 20 years.

Drive down the narrow gravel road through the trees at the northeast corner of the Fermilab Village, and you will find more than three acres of gardens, most surrounded by chain link fences or wire mesh to "keep out the critters." Half a dozen garden sheds of various colors and degrees of weathering speckle the property, and there is even an orchard. "It's a friendly atmosphere –international," says Jim Wendt, a linac technician who has been gardening with the club since 1970, two years before it moved to its present location and became an official club.

Plots are 40 feet by 20 feet and cost $5 per year, with funds going into maintenance of shared gardening equipment (such as lawnmowers and rototillers) and other repairs. "It's nice during the summertime to take a little break, get a little fresh air, get a little exercise, and then come back to work," Berman says.

Whether they are studying the cosmos or treating it for aphids, Fermilab's Garden Club members remind us that physics and nature are peas in a pod. 

Jennifer Lauren Lee

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