The Perpetual Gardeners of Penllyn

The Moore family has cultivated the land and the land has nurtured them for more than 130 years

For Walter Moore, gardening has been a lifelong love. When his left ankle became debilitated, the strength from thousands of hours of land cultivation kept him going.

During the initial months of his 93rd year, Walter Moore prepared multiple plots in the yard of his Penllyn Pennsylvania home.  During summer 2023, a condition developed that limited his mobility but he still helped with the garden.

Walter Moore and Mara Layton Moore in their garden in summer 2023. Photo: Cynthia Moore Rodwell

Update to article: Walter Moore is making a good recovery from the ankle condition that limited his mobility.

"I liked working in the garden!," Walter Moore, reflecting on his childhood experience

It’s hard to imagine children liking to work in a garden in a world of massive gaming media other electronic distractions but imagining that is a key to our salvation. The vitality of the six-generation Moore family garden legacy attests to this key for wellbeing and prosperity.   

"It's good to have a homestead," Mara Moore replies when I tell her that her granddaughter, Layton, says that she and her brother and sister intend to hold onto the family land.  All three grandchildren worked in the garden when they were growing up.

Placeholder for Moore multigenerational photo

The Moore homestead is located in a historic black community about 24 miles west of Philadelphia. It's a Sunday in July 2023 and “Miss Mara” (as southern folk would address this esteemed elder) and I are chatting on the phone when she sees that Leigh, her niece, is calling to confirm that she's on her way over to get some veggies from the garden. 

And then Mara lists produce in the mid-summer garden: "Squash” (meaning yellow) … .

"Squash!!!!!!!!!" I howl. That's a joke. Who doesn't have squash? My neighbors are trying to give theirs away. But she’s just saying what pops into her mind; not trying to impress:  "Zucchini ... ."  

How predictable!  But Mara's just getting warmed up. 

"Swiss chard, kale, various lettuces, including dark green and red tinged, spicy ones; green leaf lettuce, cucumbers, string beans. Everything!  There will be collards in the fall... . Butternut squash  ... ."  

"Butternut, then?,"  I ask, associating hard-shell squash with fall.

"No, now... .”  She continues to list her garden bounty:  “Robeson tomatoes... ." 

In addition to what Mara listed above, eggplant, wax beans, okra, peppers, herbs and several varieties of melons flourished in the summer 2023 garden. 

Mara Moore working in the garden, summer 2023. Those are garden shears in her hand, not a cell phone! Photo: Cynthia Moore Rodwell

Broad view of the Moore’s 2023 garden. Note that the garden extends beyond the ground cover at the top right corner. Photo: Cynthia Moore Rodwell

Lettuces and kale in one of the raised beds in the Moore’s summer 2023 garden. Photo: Cynthia Moore Rodwell

For Walter Moore, age 93, and Mara Moore, age 90, “the fountain of youth” has not been a body of water; it’s the ground beneath their feet.  Walter and Mara are outstanding embodiments of healthy aging though the many benefits of gardening.  

When a painful boil grew on Walter’s left ankle and limited his mobility, Walter benefited from the muscle strength and the physical energy that he had “banked” over his long, active life.  He’s now on an extended treatment regime. 

Mara continues to feel fine and be fully active:  “My chiropractor told me "Movement is medicine,” she says during our July 2023 call.  “A body can be old and tired but you still use it.”

My garden conversations with the Moore family began in 2012 and continued over the years.  During one of those conversations Walter told me about the historic African American Penllyn community.   

Walter Moore in the fall garden, November 22, 2012.

“Judge Knight broke up what had been a Welsh property and sold it to black people,” says Walter.  In the 1880s Walter Moore’s grandmother, her brother and another family from Westmoreland County, Virginia, were among the black settlers who migrated to the area seeking greater opportunities and many were employed by a nearby asbestos company.  

The settlers built homes, founded the Bethlehem Baptist church in 1885, built two church buildings; and founded a public school on their own initiative and then acquired state funds for the school.

View of early Bethlehem Baptist Church building which burned to the ground in a mysterious fire. (Photo: Bethlehem Baptist Church archive)

Walter Moore’s grandparents were early members of the church.

“Grandma started the garden,” says Walter. “She did laundry and worked for wealthy families.” In considering the life of this hardworking woman, tending a garden might seem like yet another chore.  But for black women with southern roots, the garden was a form of aesthetic expression and a revitalizing connection with nature.

Walter Moore’s grandmother grew both food and flowers. Her dark pink peonies still bloom in the yard of the house that her great grandson, Yinka Moore, now inhabits. And every spring, Yinka brings a bouquet of the pink peonies to Walter and Mara and they put them in the black cast iron pot in front of their home. Both flowers and pot are cherished family mementos.

Yinka Moore places the peonies from the bush planted by his greatgrandmother in a vase in his home that once was her home. His grandmother, A photo of his grandmother, Helen E. Moore, is displayed on the left side of the vase. Photo: Yinka Moore

Walter Moore’s mother, Helen E. Moore, 93, (center). Helen Moore is the daughter of the first Penllyn gardener. ______ (insert name). Helen Moore is shown here with her daughters (Walter’s younger and older sisters) Mortha Moore Mundell and Anita Moore Hackney. They all cultivated the garden. Helen E. Moore joined the ancestors in ____ (insert year) The Moore sisters get around well in 2023 and Martha tends a garden on a large track of land in Dayton, Ohio. (Photo: Anita Moore Hackney collection)

“In the (Penllyn) black community, everybody had some kind of garden!” Walter recalls. 

Walter Moore has been gardening since childhood and the Moore home is around the corner and down the street from Walter's grandmother's home where he began gardening.  From spring through fall, Walter, his brother and two sisters worked in the kitchen garden and a farm field that was approximately 110 x 120 feet.  

In the kitchen garden they grew rows of  tomatoes, okra, spinach, collards, kale, yellow and white corn, bush beans, pole beans, squash, rhubarb, and turnips.   

They did not use pesticides but instead picked beetles and worms off by hand or captured them “with something sweet in a jar.”  

And of course herbicides were unknown to them. They  weeded the garden by hoeing and pulling the weeds from around the plants. “Those were our chores,” says Walter.  “Also cutting the grass. There was always something to do. I liked working in the garden!  That's why I continued!” 

Walter’s grandparents also had a peach tree and apple tree in the yard and his grandmother “canned” fruit preserves and veggies in Mason jars. Walter and his siblings picked blackberries and raspberries in a thicket near where Walter now lives. 

The thicket is part of what’s now known as the Penllyn Natural Area, a wooded and wetland preserve along the Wissahickon Creek.

Generations of Moore children have had wonderful adventures in what is now called the Wissachickon Wetland Preserve. The Penllyn thicket is near the Wissachickon Trail that runs along a side of the Wissahickon Creek. In this view, a massive tree has fallen across the path and a stony path runs through the tree debris. (Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons. Greenhorse0828/Wissahickon Creek

The family had a field on the next street down from their home where they grew crops to feed the family and what was left over was sold or shared with neighbors.  Walter referred to the field as a “truck farm.”

On the truck farm, the Walter’s mostly grew potatoes and beans.  A neighbor, Arthur Gordon, had a horse and plow and tilled the land in the spring. Young Walter walked behind the plow sowing quartered potatoes.  He covered the potato bits with soil and opened the ground in the fall to harvest the new potatoes.

This man plowing a field in Missouri in 1938 resembles Arthur Gordon in the late 1930s when young Walter Moore (born 1930) worked with Gordon in the field.

(Photo: Vintage African American Photos By Black Archive)

The Moores raised pigs and chickens too.  And, like their southern kin, kept a large black cast iron pot in the yard which they used to boil the pork to remove the hairs, wash clothes and make soap.  

Walter and Mara set the cast iron pot out by a corner of their home and use it as a container for Walter’s grandmother’s pink peonies — a vibrant, doubly-meaningful, ancestral symbolism. 

Walter and Mara (Layton) met at Cheyney State Teachers College, an HBCU in Pennsylvania.  When the young couple moved to Penllyn, Mara was put off by the country aspect. “It was cold and dark. There were no street lights. I’m from the city  But spring came, I could put the baby out on the porch (without worrying about her), the flowers bloomed, and I've been in love with Penllyn ever since.” The lack of street lights allowed the Penllyn villagers to clearly see the nighttime sky: a profusion of sparkles in pitch black vastness — a stellar beauty becoming veiled in cities.

With two incomes from teaching, Walter and Mara were able to work with an architect to design their modern ranch style home in Penllyn and moved into it in 1966. On one side of the house is a large, long yard.  In 1967, Walter bought a tiller, broke up the ground in the yard and continued the family gardening tradition there.

Walter and Mara Moore designed this house in the mid-1960s with an architect. The in the living room, a large fireplace of assembled flat field stones brings a rustic Wissahickon-type ambiance into the home. (Ground view 2012, Google Maps)

Long view of the Moore family’s L-shaped garden, November 22, 2012. (Poor quality photo shot with an old cell phone camera.)

Short view of Moore L-shaped garden, November 22, 2012. (Poor quality photo shot with an old cell phone camera.)

In November 2012, Walter Moore raked fall leaves into piles for mulch.

Walter Moore with compost bin at the rear of the garden, November 22, 2012.

Mara Moore not only helps plant and harvest the garden, she’s a great cook. Her original recipes include the chard and okra dishes that are posted (can insert recipes as a sidebar, or below this section). 

The Moores have dinners with three or four veggies, either fresh from the garden or after the growing seasons, frozen.

Between 2005 and 2010, Walter installed seven  4’ x 4’ raised beds in the garden which allows him to plant more and weed less. Among the advantages of raised bed gardening is the looseness of soil (relative to packed ground dirt) and the looseness helps the seedlings to grow, he says.

He grows some of the seedlings from seeds inside his home and transplants them to the raised beds after there is no chance of frost. Other seedlings he purchases from a garden store and plants directly in the beds.

Transplanting the smaller seedlings requires lots of tender loving care and connects men to their nurturing side. If more men in power loved encouraging seedlings to grow, the world would be a more peaceful place.  

In 2020, the garden was plagued by a “terrific forager” beetle. Determining that a pesticide called Seven was “too toxic,”  Walter now uses a natural product which easily washes off.  

Walter has also learned to repel insect pests by taking the hose and just watering the plants at the roots (rather than spraying them with water) because insects are more attracted to wet leaves.  “It’s hard work,” says Walter about bending close to carefully water under leaves.  And he plants marigolds which “have a smell which is distasteful to insects.”  

After learning that insects enjoy juicy, succulent, wet leaves, I not only water my plants at the base of the stems with a long next watering can as Walter Moore advises, I scatter bits of wet green leafy greens left over from meals near the base of the stems to lure inserts away from the plants. — J.H.  (Photo: Dreamstime)

A wooded area borders the Moore property. To repel deer, raccoons and other garden "marauders," Walter applies a “terrible-smelling solution but safe for use around humans and dogs.”

In the raised beds, Walter  has grown (or grows) Swiss chard, egg plant (which were “gorgeous” in 2019 when I first interviewed him), and six kinds of lettuces which he grows on a staggered schedule so that they can be continuously harvested. 

The combination of playing tennis and strenuous gardening was Walter Moore’s complete “cross training” fitness regime.  1959 Walter was one of the first members of the Philadelphia Tennis Club in 1959. The club is a member of the American Tennis Association, established in 1916 so that black people could compete in tournaments. When her younger daughter was in third grade, Mara began to play tennis and continues to play doubles. 

When he was about 84, Walter quit tennis because of a condition (probably from an old head injury) that disturbs his balance but he was still able to bend his knees to stoop to sow seeds.   

“It’s remarkable how he’s figured out a way to do that!” Mara exclaimed during one of our conversations. “I was amazed. When I go out to help I have to get on my hands and knees but he just bends over!”

In addition to the raised beds, the Moores also cultivate plants in the open ground of their  large yard. In this section of the garden they grow plants from seed including beets, carrots, okra turnips, melons and beans.  In 2020, they had prolific, ambrosia,  musk melons — 20 melons on one plant. “And the white cabbage was great: small heads, very tender!”

“I don’t have sweet or white potatoes this year.  That’s disturbing me,” he said in May 2021.  “I’ll have to get seedlings.”  When growing from seed, “You have to identify what you’ve sown at the end of each row,”  he says or you can get confused about the plants’ identity until they have distinct features.

Walter’s Paul Robeson heirloom tomatoes are from seeds developed by Russian scientists.  Robeson (1898-1976), the towering African American intellect, athlete, stage and film performer, and political activist was popular in the USSR for supporting policies which he perceived as aligning with his interest in trade unions and social and economic equality.  Horticulturalists praise Robeson tomatoes for their “sweet, smoky taste with a hint of tanginess” and note that the variety is a favorite in taste test competitions and has cult status among some seed savers. 

Moore plants salvia, a red plant, to attract hummingbirds from Panama.  “They take the nectar from the flowering plant. And I grow as many herbs as I can.”   

He plants lavender “to give some color to the garden – like a painting.”   The latter point is just not an idle reference for a gardener who has collected original works by noted African American artists. 

Granddaughters Layton and Elise, have helped with planting and tending the garden.  Grandson Madison has tilled. 

“During such a confusing time, our time in the garden was grounding.”

Layton Rodwell reflected on her garden experience during the Covid pandemic when she was 24 years old and when she was growing up.  

When I was younger I didn’t have as much of an appreciation for gardening. Poppop (Walter) expected us to wake up before the sun was on the garden to weed, pick beans, and do all the other tasks that felt to us at that age like backbreaking work. 

When I was furloughed (from an office job in 2020) during the pandemic, I went to stay with my grandparents during the summer.  That’s when my appreciation for gardening started.  I enjoyed spending time with my grandfather and learning all of his tricks: how to space the plants, where to grow what, how to keep the pests away, etc.

During such a confusing time, our time in the garden was grounding. It provided space for bonding and growth, and I plan to keep that tradition with children and grandchildren one day.

Layton Rodwell, Mara and Walter Moore’s older granddaughter (of two granddaughters). The photo is a from a Melanin Grace shoot. Layton’s aunt, Marti Moore, founded and operates the Melanin Grace line of “clean” beauty and wellness products produced by black and brown women. Marti Moore’s health and aesthetic values were seeded in the garden.

"I am glad that these  grandchildren relate to the garden and the way plants grow and what's necessary to care for them!" Walter beams with appreciation.

When his granddaughters help him weed, he has to supervise because they can’t recognize which are edibles and which are not. “You have to know the weeds!” Walter exclaims from having identified them for more than 80 years.

As a result, Mara says the grandkids love eating veggies and “they’ll fight over the last okra pod! We are so blessed.  The fast food industry has taken over.  A ‘Happy Meal' is just not as good.” We all can be so blessed. Chronic conditions like diabetes (physical inactivity and processed foods including refined grains increase glycemic levels in the blood), obesity and heart disease and other chronic conditions would not be so prevalent if we get back to the garden.  Meanwhile, this quick guideline: the healthiest diet consists of foods in their original forms.

The three grandchildren want to keep the homestead and pass it down through more generations. But the historic Penllyn community is being gentrified.  

“ I see children, I don’t know who they are,” Mara says, reflecting on how the community was the embodiment of the “It  takes a village” aphorism.  “The church put the young people on a pedestal and they went out into the world with confidence.” About a 34 minute drive from Philadelphia, lots in Penllyn are  now considered prime real estate. 

In 2022, Walter and Mara again had a full garden. The plastic ground cover between the rows was wearing thin so at the beginning of the season, they thought they might have to hire someone to replace it. But they decided to tackle the job themselves and completed it in three days. Mara will give any surplus bounty to friends and relatives, and freeze some and take it out in February. But Walter and Mara themselves consume most of what they grow straight from the ground.   

That year Walter told me that he still liked to rise every morning, eager to get to the garden.  The experience was not just tending his plots, it was also connecting with his mother and grandmother, praising the original Wissahickon spirit of that space, and communing with Source.  

As he made his way around the beds and through the rows, “In The Garden,” often ran through Walter’s head.  But in his mind’s version of that old hymn, the dew is on the veggies, not the roses.

I come to the garden alone

While the dew is still on the roses

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear

The Son of God discloses

And he walks with me

And he talks with me

And he tells me I am His own

And the joy we share as we tarry there

None other has ever known

He speaks and the sound of His voice

Is so sweet the birds hush their singing

And the melody that He gave to me

Within my heart is ringing

And he walks with me

And he talks with me. 

---

Juliette Harris is an Ecollective editor.