Renee Babin works in the Pine Tree Townhomes community garden.

Flowers and produce have thrived in a new community garden at Pine Tree Townhomes, 149 Pinecove Drive.

Owner Ann Peuser waters plants at Clinton Parkway Nursery, 4900 Clinton Parkway. Peuser believes that one can use envy of other’s gardens to help inspire a beautiful creation at home.

There are 19 plots at the new community garden at Pine Tree Townhomes, featuring items such as tomatoes and basil.

For years, Renee Babin had garden envy.

She’d see beautiful, lush plants dripping with tomatoes or peppers and then skulk back up to her apartment and stew about her lack of a plot to call her own.

“For years, I’ve always been envious of other people’s gardens and that they could just grow things and they would just bring them to school for their lunches and say, ‘Oh, I grew this pepper in my garden,'” the Lawrence educator says. “I had always lived in apartments where I didn’t have the opportunity to garden.”

But this spring, Babin was able to channel all that garden envy into helping to make a community garden at her new home at the Pine Tree Townhouses in Lawrence. Babin is the co-chair of the project, a garden with 19 plots and lots of spunk, thanks to a group of gardeners eager to jump out of containers and into their own 3-foot by 6-foot plot.

“I really liked the idea of not only growing my own things, but doing it in a community with other people,” says Babin, who is now co-chair of the Pine Tree garden and the owner of some of the bushiest basil plants in East Lawrence.

And yes, Babin’s basil induces some envy among her friends, including Deena Wilson, who has the plot next to Babin’s.

“I envy her basil because I love to make pesto,” says Wilson, who has made pesto with some of Babin’s basil. “I planted basil, oh, probably the same time, and mine is teeny tiny. And I so I went and got two more basil, to hopefully be able to get the volume of basil that she’s getting, and again they’re just not growing.”

Jennifer Smith, extension agent for the Douglas County K-State Research and Extension office, 2110 Harper St., says she believes “garden envy” is common and not even seasonal — just thinking of the one neighborhood lawn that stays vividly green in the winter can send folks into a frenzy.

That said, she thinks most of the time the envy results in something positive, like the community garden at Pine Tree or the sharing of plants or knowledge.

“I think it would be more likely to be positive thing where you would see something and it would make you want to work harder in your garden or spend more time on your garden to make it better,” Smith says. “I wouldn’t think it would ever be destructive. Unless you maybe devote too much time to your garden, and begin neglecting your other stuff.”

The reasons for the difference in production could be many, Smith says, including when it was planted, the variety, how healthy the plants are and if the soil has been amended.

Those adjustments mean a lot to Lawrence gardener Diane Taveggia, who says she went from working with a shady space to a plot in full sun and the envy of Babin. It’s funny though, because she’s surprised anyone, even a friend like Babin, would envy her 18-plant garden at all. But maybe that’s because she’s so used to having her gardens, which she does by the space-maximizing square-foot method, fail.

“I always had a garden, and it was spectacularly unsuccessful, because there just wasn’t any sun,” Taveggia says. “But then I did this square-foot gardening here, where there’s tons of sun and it’s gone completely crazy. There’s all kinds of stuff happening.”

And what to do if your garden, like Taveggia’s, is the object of envy? Be flattered and helpful says Ann Peuser, owner of Clinton Parkway Nursery, 4900 Clinton Parkway. She says she believes garden envy only adds to the worth of the neighborhood, and that no one should view the admiration as “they’re trying to copy” me.

“I think it brings up the spirit and the ambiance of the neighborhood,” she says of receiving interest from neighbors. “Some people will obviously probably take it the wrong way … but there’s always going to be those people and just let them have their thing. If it’s that important to them, that’s fine.”

As for Babin’s envy? It’s lessened but it’s definitely still there.

All she has to do is look at any of the plots near hers in the Pine Tree garden and the envy ramps up once again.

“I don’t think it will ever go away. There’s always somebody else to be envious of,” she says. “I’m happy with my garden and very proud of it, but there are a lot of other gardens to be envious of.”