24 May 2010

Are you involved with a community garden?

For those of you who follow this blog regularly, you know that I've been working on a proposal to start a community garden where I teach. In the past few months there has been an incredible (almost surprising) amount of progress. We have gained the support of the buildings and grounds folk, the cabinet (vp's and deans), and the president. Our next step will be to organize a group of students, staff, and faculty to create a final proposal and implementation plan for approval by the board and the president.

Between now and the beginning of next semester I need to visit some community gardens and speak with community garden organizers to gain a concrete understanding of how a project like this is built and sustained. A student leadership group at the school has already communicated with ten schools that have community gardens to build a base model of what this thing could be, but I would really like to speak with some people so I can get a personal sense of the big picture.

So, if any of you are involved with community gardens and have time to share your knowledge, please send it my way. If any of you live in Philadelphia, New York City, or their surrounding areas, I would love to visit and talk. Thanks in advance.

3 comments:

Era said...

I'm involved with community gardens in every facet of my life - I live and breathe them. I've been keeping up with your project, there's so much land and so much potential! I would love to share, just send me an e-mail.

Unknown said...

Hey Era,
I'll be in touch. Thanks.

Anna said...

In Philly you could talk to:

Summer/Winter Community Garden of Powelton Village
Summer & N. 33rd Streets
Joe Revlock
215-387-0341
joseph.revlock@verizon.net
Number of plots: 37
Number of gardeners: 60+

and:
http://www.ngalandtrust.org/

My CSA (in West Chester)is small and might offer some insights, one of the owners also worked at the Village for Arts and Humanites in the NE.
http://www.imbymistyhollow.com/