Local green thumbs harvest top honors
Chester. Backyard veggie plots, food forests, tiny farms and community gardens open their gates for Dirt magazine’s Kitchen Garden Tour.
| 06 Aug 2025 | 10:41
Wallisch Homestead Community Garden took first place for Best Community Garden. (Photo provided)
Winning gardeners, from left, are Sohan Dhesi and Patrick Scott; Rhona Bork and family; Ozzie Colon, Lauren Mariotti and children; Chad Pilieri of Grow Local Greenwood Lake; Jim Segal of Wallisch Homestead Community Garden; Dirt publisher Becca Tucker; and Diane and Larry Mansour. (Photo by Molly Colgan)
Patrick Scott and Sohan Dhesi took home first place this year for their Florida, N.Y., regenerative ‘tiny farm.’ They’re standing in front of a living fence made of braided dogwood saplings. (Photo by Becca Tucker)
Dahlia Colon, daughter of Ozzie Colon and Lauren Mariotti, with the garden toolbag awarded to winning gardens. The family’s Warwick, N.Y., garden took second place. (Photo by Becca Tucker)
Visitors tour the garden of Ozzie Colon and Lauren Mariotti in Warwick, N.Y. (Photo by Becca Tucker)
A visitor checks out the Colon-Mariotti garden. This expanded raised bed portion was built over a former driveway. (Photo by Becca Tucker)
Larry Mansour talks potatoes with visitors to his Warwick, N.Y., garden while a young visitor shows off her berry haul. (Photo by Becca Tucker)
Common Ground Community Garden in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., took second place for Best Community Garden. (Photo provided)
The new sharing stand for surplus produce at Common Ground Community Garden.
Local gardeners took home top awards at Dirt’s 11th annual Kitchen Garden Tour on Sunday, Aug. 3.
About 90 people spent the day exploring 15 gardens, then met up for an after-party at Meadow Blues in Chester, N.Y., to vote for their favorites.
The following gardeners won by popular vote this year:
• Patrick Scott of Florida, N.Y., took first place for Best Garden. He and his wife, Sohan Dhesi, started their beyond-organic “tiny farm” in 2022, sourcing fenceposts from trees harvested from their property. The homestead has grown to include a farmstand, herb and pollinator gardens, shiitake mushroom logs, a small-scale CSA, 33 free-range chickens and wild bees that Scott enticed to occupy an empty hive. Scott is a newcomer to the tour this year.
• Ozzie Colon and Lauren Mariotti’s Warwick, N.Y., garden took second place for Best Garden. The family’s sunken garden - nearly invisible to drivers-by on the nearby road - grows tomatoes, lettuce, Swiss chard, eggplant, peppers, squash, herbs and flowers like their signature zinnias and nasturtiums. Since their last time on the tour, they’ve evolved toward a food forest, adding peach and apple trees, plus a nature play space for their young daughters. It’s their third time taking home an award from the Kitchen Garden Tour.
• Rhona Bork’s Goshen, N.Y., garden, new to the tour this year, took third place for Best Garden. Bork’s garden is maintained by multiple generations of her family and is home to a flock of pasture-raised chickens. In compost-rich beds, Bork grows garlic (the family kitchen staple), potatoes, onions, tomatoes, turnips, parsnips, lettuce, celery, cabbage, broccoli, peppers, basil, elderberry, asparagus, beets, cauliflower and beans.
• Wallisch Homestead Community Garden in West Milford took first place for Best Community Garden. The volunteer gardeners maintain a donation plot and participate in the Ample Harvest food-sharing program that distributes extra produce to food pantries.
• Common Ground Community Garden in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., took second place for Best Community Garden. It recently added a sharing stand to give away surplus produce. It’s Common Ground’s fourth time taking home an award from the Kitchen Garden Tour.
• Larry Mansour’s Warwick, N.Y., garden took first place for Most Hospitable Garden. His cedar-fenced garden features a thriving orchard of apples, pears, peaches, grapes, apricots and cherries; berry bushes; neat rows of veggies and herbs; and an apiary. He and his wife, Diane, encouraged visitors to pick berries and gave them little honey bears of their hive’s honey on the way out. It’s Mansour’s second time showing his homestead on the Kitchen Garden Tour; last year, he took first place for Best Garden.
“As satisfying as it is to save money on your grocery bill, the kitchen garden is so much more than just the best deal in town,” said Dirt magazine publisher Becca Tucker during the awards ceremony. “It’s about connection - to nature, to place and to ancestors who saved the seeds we’re planting and perhaps carried them from old country to new.
“It’s about slowing down in a world that feels like it’s spinning faster all the time - to savor a handful of berries or the thrum of a hummingbird.
“It’s about kinship - between neighbors sharing their famous hot pepper jelly or mom’s zucchini bread recipe; commiserating over cucumber beetles or getting together on a day like today to exchange notes, best practices and share in the simple joy of tending the land.”