Secure your funding while going out to the community to drum up business. Here in Sunnyvale, we were offered a large grant to build a community garden. It took us two years to secure the land and build an agreement with the City over building and maintaining the garden (they gave us the land for five years - we did the rest). During those two years we were constantly out in the public seeking support, getting people to join our email list, come to weekly meetings, and generally support our efforts so when we went before council we had a ground swell of support. When we asked or volunteers to actually construct the garden (only one contractor was hired to uproot dead trees and drive the heavy machinery to level the land, as well as put in the main irrigation line), we got weekends of 30-40 volunteers to help build the gardens. I believe this came from our efforts at gaining public support for the garden. We now have 87 families gardening our leased beds. And many, many more coming to just stroll through the beauty that is our new civic center community garden; Charles Street Gardens. Thanks for asking, Josh President Sustainable Community Gardens Google Maps to see the site at 433 Charles St Sunnyvale CA -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org Sent: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 9:54 AM Subject: [Community_garden] What comes first?
Hello all, I am new to this listserv. I am intrigued by Adam's question of "What comes first?" The neighborhood/community interest in a garden or the garden itself? I am employed by an NPO that operates a food pantry in Baton Rouge, LA, as well as a mentoring program aimed at stabilizing low-income families housing situations. We are currently contemplating starting a community garden here at HOPE. We are blessed with quite a bit of flat, sunny land on a busy urban street (the most underutilized land in the neighborhood, in fact). We would like to grow a garden in order to stock fresh produce in our food pantry as well as to bring the community together in the realization that they do have the power to take control of their diet and not be so reliant on the corporate-based food distribution system currently operating in our country. But here's the rub? Do we go out and secure a large grant, hire a Gardening Coordinator, build raised beds and then throw a planting party, inviting the neighborhood? Or do we build grassroots support for the garden and make it more of a neighborhood project from the start? I am tend to favor option #2, but this is the long-run approach and could take a very long time. Whereas we are a well-established organization which does have the resources (and access to resources) to build a garden in a much more expeditious fashion. So what to do? I would love it for those of you on this list to hash it out with me. Ready, set, go! Jonathan M. Hammett Case Worker Family Mentoring Program United Methodist HOPE Ministries (225) 355-0702 ext. 28 (225) 357-6351 fax jhammett at hopeministriesbr.org The mission of United Methodist HOPE Ministries is to coordinate ministries, provide resources & establish relationships that help the people we serve move toward self-sufficiency with dignity. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20061012/453db8d2/attachment.html _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden at list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org ________________________________________________________________________ Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20061012/86cd288d/attachment.html
