New London ― About a year ago, Alicia McAvay was taking one of her frequent strolls through Bates Woods Park when she spotted a “big old pile of granite,” being stored on the city-owned property.

“We could use that,” McAvay, the director of the FRESH New London food justice organization, recalled thinking while gazing at the field of irregularly shaped blocks, remnants of recent city sidewalk and curb replacement projects.

Several piles of those stones sat in front of the nonprofit group’s leased urban farm property at 17 and 19 Cottage St. on Monday where a small excavator smoothed over an upper level of the multi-tiered garden.

The surplus granite will soon be used as stabilizing material for degraded retaining walls at the garden property that, at its apex, rises 30 feet above street level.

McAvay said the donation of approximately 2,500 linear feet of surplus granite by the city this month grew out of conversations between her group and Public Works Director Brian Sear.

Sear said the granite is part of a stored cache of stone the city had no real use for anymore. He said there were no plans to reuse the old walkway material as it’s cheaper and faster to simply install new, machine-milled granite slabs for sidewalk and curb replacement projects.

He said there’s been discussion about putting some of it on pallets and letting people bid on it while some of it will probably get crushed and used for roads and drainage systems.

“But having (FRESH) take some of it is a super win-win,” Sear said.

McAvay said FRESH has hired a firm to transport the granite from Bates Woods to Cottage Street, where it will buttress old stone walls keeping the sloped tiers of garden soil in place.

“We had looked at purchasing new material, but they were expensive and won’t look as beautiful as these blocks which match what’s already there,” she said.

The FRESH group, which oversees rental and free garden plots throughout the city, began leasing the Cottage Street property about five years ago.

A cadre of paid young workers and volunteers each season plant a variety of “culturally relevant crops,” at the property, including okra, collard greens, calabaza squash and Chinese long beans, that are sold during “pay-what-you-can” pop-up farmers markets. Surplus vegetables are donated to a local food pantry.

Workers harvest about 2,000 pounds of fresh produce each season from the property.

McAvay said granite and regrading work at the farm will expand the planting area by about 12 feet, or an extra two crop rows. She said an anonymous donor has funded the estimated $35,000 cost.

“But we plan to ask for matching donations to help with our future plans for the property,” she said. “We want to eventually add a rain-catch system, outdoor refrigerator and greenhouse, part of a $300,000 upgrade project we have planned.”

McAvay said the terracing project is slated to be complete by early May.

“Just in time for planting,” she said.

j.penney@theday.com