A COMMUNITY GARDEN OVERVIEW
- Look for sites in your own community where you
could begin some container gardening. Produce can be shared with
congregations or individuals in need.
- Sponsor a container garden in an inner-city
church. Forty wading pools can produce up to 2,000 pounds of
vegetables!
- Empower women to help themselves. With a few
hundred containers, unemployed women could start their own produce and
flower business. Social service agencies can help locate or provide
the containers.
- Enlist the help of neighborhood children in
establishing the community garden.
- Propose that local schools set up educational
programs in gardening and create container garden at the edge of a
school playground.
- Get the word to agricultural communities such as
Honduras, Nicaragua where natural disasters have devastated acreage.
What is left after mud slides is rocks and sand -- soil without
nutrition. People could start growing immediately with container
gardens.
(Thoughts from New
York's City Farmers: The specifics of starting a community garden)
BEFORE YOU START YOUR GARDEN
- Don't keep your garden a secret! Let people in
your community know you are starting a garden.
- Solicit free tools, seeds, lumber and advice
from local gardening and lumber stores. Glove manufacturers are often
willing to provide work gloves to adults and children in inner-city
areas.
- City zoos are happy to provide `zoo-doo'.
- Free compost is often available from
municipalities.
We trust that this information has provided you with
the tools and enthusiasm to start your own container garden. With minimal
investment, you can be on your way to enjoying the country's leading pastime no
matter where you live and help curb our ever-increasing dependence on
controversial food sources.
We urge you to contact us for additional information
and assistance and hope that you share your successes (as well as your
challenges) with us soon.
CONTACT INFORMATION
- Job Ebenezer, Director for Environmental
Stewardship and Hunger Education; Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America 8765 W. Higgins Road; Chicago, IL 60631
(ph) 773.380.2708
· (fax) 773.380.2707 email: ebenezer@elca.org
(Wading
pool container gardening, as developed at the ELCA roof-top garden)
- Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization
(ECHO), 17430 Durrance Road, North Fort Myers, FL 33917; (ph)
941-543-3246
- City Farmer - Canada's Office of Urban
Agriculture,
#801-318 Homer St.
Vancouver BC V6B 2V3
phone:
604-685-5832
e-mail: cityfarm@interchange.ubc.ca or see their web
site: http://www.cityfarmer.org
- The American Community Gardening Association,
325 Walnut Street;
Philadelphia, PA 19106 (fax) 215.988.8810
- GreenThumb, City of New York/Parks &
Recreation, 49 Chambers Street, Room 1020; New York, NY 10007 (tel)
212. 788.8059
- Please click here for information about the
documentary "City Farmers".
Or,
contact SouthHawk Studios; P. O. Box 545; Monterey, MA 01245
(ph)
413.528.4839 · (fax) 413.528.3148 (email) mhj48@earthlink.net
* This web article was compiled and designed by SouthHawk
Studios: mhj48@earthlink.net
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