Rory, we have many of our (in Seattle Washington) community gardens on parks land along with other municipality land and private land. The real issue with the "messy" nature is not related to public land at all but esthetics. Everyone, even internally, in our community gardens have a different set of esthetics. There is always the un-tended plots, those that have not been actively gardened but even that has a plethora of reasons (family member died, had a baby, hurt themselves, or yes just is not following through). I say all of this because the bigger conversation I think needs to be around a working garden, not a passive park that to me is the difference. You can offer to make efforts to work on improving the "bones" of the garden, add artistic elements, plant flower borders that bloom throughout the year, but nothing you do can change the nature of a working garden that changes. We have the added struggle or benefit! of year round garden, not even the fallow snow time for us. The other issue for me is the ability to be inclusive of varied aesthetic sensibilities, obviously again there are those plots that are down right not taken care of but even that could mean that the person say has some emotional issues and the garden is saving them from going off the deep end. This is an on going struggle with Working Community Gardens to keep having the conversation and not just around who owns the land.
Thanks for your time, Sandy Pernitz Community Garden Coordinator P-Patch Community Gardening Program/Sustaining Grounds for Growing Communities "I'm just a prairie flower growing wilder hour by hour nobody ever cultivates me, I'm wild" William Carlos Williams PO Box 94649 Seattle, WA 98124-4649 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 206-684-0284 office location: Department of Neighborhoods/700 5th Avenue Suite 1700 >>> "Rory Cohen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4/1/2008 4:19 PM >>> Friends: We have a small (10-12 family) organic community garden, the first in a park in cheltenham township, PA. We've been operating for 5 seasons now. One of the neighbors thinks the garden is 'messy' and 'unsightly' and is trying to get it shut down. One of the arguments they are using is that the garden is in a public park, and they say that most community gardens are on private or institutional land. this isn't true according to my research, but I need to gather more examples of community gardens that are on park land. Can you help? Warmly, Mobile:1 215 287 6458 Toll Free: 1 877 669 9746 www.take10now.com <http://www.take10now.com/> <http://www.thesecretin10minutes.com/> www.thesecretin10minutes.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20080401/6aa3a5da/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 5434 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20080401/6aa3a5da/attachment.jpe _______________________________________________ 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@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20080402/d57973e1/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@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
