RE: >> say, i'm just sharing. i've got two projects this spring - don't know about the rest of the continent, but in Atlanta, it's spring - that are compelling enough to make me want to type about them. both of these are community gardens that were sort of high-end for our city, they each were spacious and had tool sheds and fences and plumbing. and they both dropped dead about four years ago. but now both of them have new chance at life, new people with new desire and enthusiasm. anyway, i just thought it was interesting that the swirling masses of people living their lives around these old ruins would suddenly and simultaneously alight upon them.<<
Fred, "If you build it, they will come!" Wasn't that what the voice said in that Kevin Costner baseball weepie, "Field of Dreams?" We're having hard times here in America; some places never had easy times. While doing research for a talk I'm giving at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden later this month, I came across this factoid about NYC gardens that may be apropos to your experience, >From a piece called a "A Brief History of Grass Roots Greening in NYC," by Sarah Ferguson, a Lower East Side based journalist who has written rather extensively about community gardens in the Village Voice and other publications: "Community gardening in New York has always followed the boom and bust cycles of the economy, with gardens sprouting up during periods of stress and falling land values, then withering away when demands on the land became overwhelming. During the Depression, the City's welfare department and the federal Works Project Administration sponsored nearly 5,000 "relief" gardens on vacant city lots for unemployed people. But the project was canceled in 1937, when the USDA initiated its food stamp program for farm-surplus products. Though many immigrant families continued tending backyard plots, the gardening cause remained dormant until WWII, when the city announced that all available, city-owned land would be cultivated for Victory Gardens. Despite their success, these plots were abandoned at the close of the war, when the end of food rationing and a burgeoning frozen-food industry squelched the initiative of urban farmers." I imagine other cities had similar experiences. It looks like hard times are boom times for community gardens. Make hay while the sun shines. Best wishes, Adam Honigman ______________________________________________________ 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: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
