[Community_garden] Cancellation of New Orleans Conference

[Kirsten Saylor]

Hi Fred, 

 

It's a great idea.  We just had our Community Garden Spring Resource
Fair with a turnout of 500 people.  About 40% were community gardeners,
and another 25% were interested in starting or joining a garden, and the
rest came to learn more.  This was our largest event ever, in no small
part due to our keynote speaker, Will Allen from Growing Power in
Milwaukie, WI.  It is a lot of work to host an event this large, but we
discovered through our dot survey (recommend it!) that over 80% of the
people there had learned of the Fair from email, listservs and friends
-> networking, word of mouth.  25% of the people came from the suburbs,
greater Minnesota or further. That's wonderful!  And we are flattered
and honored!   

 

GardenWorks continues to work to network community gardeners across the
Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota, largely through our online Garden
Directory and local listserv, COMGAR.  We still have much work to do
with both of these.  Every garden is not on the Directory, and not every
garden has a gardener on COMGAR, but both of these have come along way
in two years, and people are finding both the directory and the listerv
useful and informative.  

 

Again, I think it is a great idea to have regional conferences - it's so
important for gardeners to see and meet all the other community
gardeners near them, because there is so much they can learn from each
other and potential partnerships that can lead to reduced costs,
creative solutions, and better garden dynamics and community
relationships.  

 

See you in the garden!  Kirsten

 

Kirsten Saylor

GardenWorks, Program Manager

The Green Institute

2801 21st Avenue South, Suite 110

Minneapolis, MN  55407

612-278-7123

ksaylor at greeninstitute.org

www.gardenworksMN.org

Promoting and Preserving Community Gardening Across the Twin Cities

 

 

Message: 1

Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 14:44:28 -0400

From: "Fred Conrad" <fred.conrad at acfb.org>

Subject: Re: [Community_garden] Cancellation of New Orleans Conference

To: "Jack Hale" <jackh at knoxparks.org>, "James Kuhns"

      <jkuhns at sympatico.ca>,  "ACGA Listserv"

      <community_garden at list.communitygarden.org>

Message-ID:

      <6A1C23B5F035A04CA7322C243E9B03FD651A43 at ACFB-MAIL.acfb.org>

Content-Type: text/plain;     charset="us-ascii"

 

Jack,

That's a great idea and one that I have been thinking of posting a
question about.

 

Here in Atlanta, one of our community gardens, a leader in the movement
really, has been very interested in establishing an
alliance/association/confederation of the local autonomous community
gardens.  There have been a couple stabs at it, but it hasn't gone
anywhere.

 

Our own local ACGA Board member, Bobby Wilson (and Cathy Walker) of the
Atlanta Urban Garden Program, hosts a Leadership Program that is open to
all.  It's fun, educational, but does not draw from the entire pool.  I
for one enjoy every meeting and co-host it myself once a year.  I
promote it heavily with the gardens I work with, but we (AUGP really)
still only get turn out from part of our constituency.  It's a great
opportunity and I wish everyone would come.

 

This other group envisions something more of an advocacy role than that
of educational, volunteer, material support.  I think.  We keep not
locking into a good vision.

 

Anyway, I guess I'm asking for feedback from cities that lack a
municipal/umbrella program but have formed a working group representing
many many many extremely autonomous community gardens from a fairly wide
geographic area (six counties at least).  What is your mission?  What
have your accomplishments been?

 

I'm surprised there hasn't been more reaction to the conference
cancellation, by the way.

fgc

 

Fred Conrad

Community Garden Coordinator

Atlanta Community Food Bank

732 Joseph E Lowery Blvd, NW, Atlanta, GA 30318

ph: 678.553.5932 fx: 678.553.5933

fred.conrad at acfb.org    <http://www.acfb.org <http://www.acfb.org/> > 

Our mission is to fight hunger by engaging, educating and empowering our
community.

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