Heather Latter
A meeting to continue with plans to move ahead with the further development of a small community garden started this past summer will be held tomorrow (Jan. 27) at 4 p.m. in the boardroom at the Northwestern Health Unit office here.
“We have definitely determined there is community interest, so we’d like to start moving forward,” said Becky Holden, a health educator with the health unit here.
“It’s really going to be a brainstorming session,” she noted.
The small garden initiated this past summer was located at the family housing unit at Sixth Street West and Webster Avenue.
Holden indicated there still is interest from the tenants to continue on with that garden, so the plan is to build on its success and develop a larger one elsewhere.
But she stressed a larger project is a community effort and she hopes even more people get on board.
“We’re still open to other people who are interested in being involved,” Holden remarked.
“We’re going to start doing some action planning and looking at what we want to do, how we’re going to do it, and who can help us,” she explained.
Some of the items that will be discussed tomorrow include what other partners could get involved in the project, possible sources of funding, and ideas for the location of the community garden.
“It’s not the time of year that you are really thinking about gardening, but the planning stages take a while,” Holden reasoned.
In order to develop the larger community garden, Holden admitted they’ll need support from quite a few people.
“We need people at all stages—not just the gardening stage,” she stressed, noting there are many benefits to having a community garden in our area.
“[It’s] a great way to provide people with the skills who don’t know how to garden, offering them the opportunity to learn how to garden, as well as for people who know how to garden but don’t have garden space or can no longer maintain large gardens,” she said.
Holden said a community garden can be run in many different ways. For instance, plots could be rented out and those people be responsible for their own area, or the whole garden can be maintained with everyone pitching in.
“Our project this [past] summer was an open garden,” she noted. “People could come work on it and take what they wanted.
“We actually donated a lot of the food to food banks if it wasn’t be used or wanted by any of the tenants,” she added.
Holden said how the larger garden is run will depend on community interest and how the planning progresses.
Anyone with questions, comments, or ideas is encouraged to attend tomorrow’s meeting at the health unit or contact Holden at 274-9827.
