Energy levels ran high at the community gardens in the Railyard Park on a Saturday morning as people turned the soil, planted and shared information. Although community gardens aren't a novel idea, they are new to the Railyard Park.

Eliza Kretzmann, executive director of the Railyard Park Stewards, said she is pleased to see the gardens being planted sooner rather than later. She noted that with the help of the Stewards, volunteers, the City of Santa Fe, political negotiations and public meetings the community gardens were written into the Railyard Master Plan.

Libby Reinish and Tristan Chambers started the Santa Fe Community Gardens organization about a year ago and are overseeing this project. The amount of gardening experience in the group varies, they said, from the very experienced to the absolute beginner.

"We had an orientation meeting, and the general sense I got was that people who grew up on farms were missing a connection to the land and wanted to have a space to garden," Reinish said. "People are really excited about gardening with other enthusiasts and sharing skills and helping each other."

Some parents are gardening with young children. Jeff Emberton said that his 3-1/2-year-old son, Levi, is extremely excited about working in the garden.

"My son really wanted to have a garden. When I saw an ad in the paper for this community garden I asked him if it was something he would like to do," Emberton said. "His answer was an enthusiastic yes, so we applied and got this plot."

Although Emberton does the heavy work, it is Levi's input that will make this garden a colorful, child-inspired fantasy that includes rainbow chard, rainbow carrots, tomatoes, radishes, peas, green beans and giant marigolds. Working the soil isn't new to Emberton, who grew up on a large farm in the Midwest. His family always had a vegetable patch and compost pile — but the challenges of gardening in New Mexico are new to him. "You don't just plant the seeds and let it rain," he said. "It's a lot harsher here. You have to adapt by mulching, and ideally you want drip irrigation systems."

One plot is being planted by teens who are part of the Youth Allies for Sustainability Program.

"They are an awesome group of kids," Reinish said. "They came at 8 a.m. this morning, and we didn't plan on starting until 9. Half a dozen 16-year-olds at a garden on a Saturday morning — I was pretty impressed."

Lou Schreiber, who doesn't have a great deal of gardening experience, is planting a square-foot garden. Schreiber said he learned this technique from reading Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, and is using the book to guide him through the gardening process.

"Bartholomew was an engineer and has an engineering perspective about the way he approaches gardening," Schreiber said. "Some people would say he makes it too easy, but I like that."

Schreiber's garden is raised and divided into square-foot sections. He waters each section with one cup of water, and knows exactly where each plant is so no water is wasted. This is an excellent method for those who are extremely methodical, he said.

"Instead of just working and amending the soil, there is a recipe — one-third each of compost, peat moss and vermiculite. This makes the soil very water retentive," Schreiber said. "Bartholomew has a chart of how much to plant in each square, based on root growth and the amount of space the plant will take."

Chambers said one of the things he is excited about is being able to offer people a space they don't usually have if they live in an apartment — or if they are renting a place that has a yard covered in gravel. As a young boy, Chambers planted his first garden in his back yard in western Massachusetts. He said he became excited about agriculture in New Mexico after moving to Santa Fe to attend St. John's College.

"I really appreciate the acequia and got involved with cleaning it," he said. "It's a fascination of mine. That's why I wanted to get involved with the community gardening effort."

Kretzmann, who helped start a community garden in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., said that many national models were examined for information about community gardens, adding that it is "a grand experiment and very exciting."

Each of the Railyard Community Garden's 19 plots is 5 feet by 10 feet, and the deadline has passed to reserve a plot for this season. The annual fee to work a plot is $40, which includes basic soil, water and a bag of compost. All the money raised from bed fees goes back into the project. For more information about the Santa Fe Community Gardens, call Eliza Kretzmann at 988-5922 or visit www.santafecommunitygardens.org.