[Community_garden] Thriving CG program in mid-size city?

[Don Boekelheide]

Hi, Steve,

I'd suggest Portland, Oregon (easy to visit for you) with a Park and Rec Dept. sponsored program, and Sacramento, CA, in addition to Kalamazoo. I wonder how Columbus, Ohio is doing, with the ACGA now in residence and the Scott's Co. with a community garden program just down the road. And of course there is Vancouver BC close by, too. And how about Austin, Texas? And Jack Hale's years of good work up in Hartford, Connecticut? And the granddaddy of us all, the programs in Burlington, Vermont? I keep thinking of more, the college towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan and Madison, Wisconsin, some with Victory Gardens still in existence (last I heard)...

Anyway, it is a good question. I'm also curious about the same thing, so please keep us all posted. 

Meanwhile, Charlotte (pop 500,000 and growing fast, almost 1,000,000 in our metro area) keeps slouching very slowly toward a 'real' community garden program. Right now, here, progress is steady but very unspectacular, and focused garden-by-garden rather than community-wide.

There seems to be very little interest in cooperation among non-profit community garden sponsors and public agencies, and even problems communicating within agencies! For instance, Park and Rec has become a major sponsor, but within Park and Rec there is no community garden coordinating group or the like. If anything, there is a pervasive underlying sense of competition. When I recently told a friend who works for Park and Rec, in (small) part working with community gardens, that the YMCA was thinking of doing a garden, she said "Oh, we don't like them, they're the competition...". 

Decision-making tends to be very top down, with little inclination to include garden activists, and much less to including gardeners, in planning and managing. Unfortunately, few if any of the top down planners has much community gardening experience and not a few have no earthly idea what you are talking about when you say 'community garden'. This kind of attitude is common: "It's just poor folks growing a few tomatoes on a vacant lot until somebody can build on it, and that's about it - isn't it? What's there to know?"

Also, we're still at the 'bright idea' stage, where a person with some political capital - for instance, the daughter of a big donor to a large non-profit or a rising young administrator with the Food Bank - comes along and says "Oh, wouldn't a community garden with a 'Plant-A-Row' campaign be just great?" Seemingly oblivious to existing community gardening initiatives, this well meaning and well connected soul captures some tens of thousands of dollars in funding, their program starts to great fanfare, and then it stalls and dies. By September, the garden is full of weeds and gets its moment of TV notoriety on the local Fox News. It is hastily mowed, then abandoned, and embarrassed funders don't want to hear the words 'community garden', at least for a year or two until the next well-connected soul with visions of carrots and compassion shows up at their door. 

We hosted the ACGA training here 3 years ago, and it felt mighty good. Turns out, though, that we may have been preaching to the choir - those who came in open to community organizing came away feeling affirmed, and the training went in one ear and out the other for the other 3/4 of participants (my Park and Rec friend attended the training). This isn't to knock the training, which has great materials and ideas, but Charlotte might do better with a 'mentor' program like the one ACGA used to offer.

Anyway, we need examples of successful gardens and programs. We are making good progress on both those fronts locally, actually, in spite of my bellyaching. All the same, it certainly would help us to have success stories from similarly-sized cities.

Don Boekelheide
Charlotte, NC
 
-----Original Message-----
From: community_garden-bounces at list.communitygarden.org
[mailto:community_garden-bounces at list.communitygarden.org]On Behalf Of
Steven Garrett
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 10:13 PM
To: community gardening
Subject: [Community_garden] Thriving CG program in mid-size city?


Hi all,
  I am looking to see if there are any thriving community garden programs in
any mid-size cities with demographics comparable to Tacoma, WA (which does
not have a thriving program). See Tacoma demographics at:
http://tacoma.areaconnect.com/statistics.htm

  It would be great if another city had other similarities, like being in
the West, deindustrializing (but not an economic basketcase), etc. The
recent flurry about Newark NJ got me thinking about this, but Newark is
nothing like Tacoma, except in size of population.

  Thanks in advance for any leads.
Steven


Steven Garrett, PhC, MS, RD
Ph.D. Candidate, Social and Environmental Geography
University of Washington and
Nutrition Education Evaluation Specialist
Washington State University

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