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Community garden flourishing in Cary

A community garden in downtown Cary is helping feed others.

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CARY, N.C. — A community garden in downtown Cary is helping feed others.
Keith Bliss, a real estate agent by trade, turned a private plot of land on Dry Avenue into a community garden. He says he calls it Cary's Pocket Garden because it's a pocket of land.

"Well, where do you give from, you give from your pocket," Bliss said.

The no-pesticide garden contains 1,500 plants, everything from watermelon to seven types of tomatoes. The plants, seeds and gardening materials are donated by Cary businesses.

“I've always wanted a place where in the middle of summer, I could remember my youth where I would grab a sun-ripened tomato and bite right into it,” Bliss said.

Volunteers help care for the garden and members pay $100 to join. They must work in the garden four hours a month.

“It's a physical activity for me, but then I know our ultimate goal is to give back to people who don't really have anything,” Cary's Pocket Garden member Tom McKay said.

In the first two months, the garden's 20 members harvested 300 pounds of food. Of that, 200 pounds was donated to the Inter-faith Food Shuttle.

Members have pledged to donate at least 10 percent of everything grown in the garden to the nonprofit which helps feed the hungry.

The garden is looking to attract more members and to build a patio to host educational workshops on organic gardening.

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