Plans for Justice Park Community Garden
The last time I sat in on a planning meeting for our neighborhood’s new community garden I was nearly run out of the room for suggesting it be built along the lines of a CSA farm, rather than simply providing plots to individuals. I reasoned that lots more food could be grown on a small farm under single management, but gardeners want their individual plots.
The plans for this 1/4-acre garden have come a long way since then. Recently Mayor Adrian Fenty participated in a much ballyhooed ground-breaking. Since our last meeting, a working group of gardeners has put up a site on Facebook, registered a Twitter account and even printed business cards, along with the Yahoo! listerv we’ve been using to announce meetings.
Last night, revised architectural drawings were revealed to a meeting of about 20 prospective plot holders and representatives from the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, which is responsible for the land.
In all, the plans provide for 40 individual plots, each about 50 square feet in size. That’s a pretty good size for a community garden plot. But the parcel also has room for a public area with room to stroll, seating and even tables. The discussion now centers on a proposed storage shed that some members would rather not look at, or think is too big. But the more I look at the plans, the more I see a place for a community composting facility, or even a greenhouse.
One of the most frequent questions I get from neighbors is where can they compost their kitchen scraps if the don’t have a compost heap of their own. The District of Columbia does not have a municipal composting program (it needs one), and people want to be more environmentally responsible and not send their food wastes to the landfill, where it just turns into methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Last year, a group proposed building such a composting facility at another community garden but could not get the grant funding it needed to get the project off the ground. With the city funding our new community garden, this is the perfect time to take up the idea of a small neighborhood composting facility, perhaps an indoor worm operation that could be used as a model for the whole city, as well as providing valuable worm castings for the garden plots.
Better yet, if not a storage shed, what about a greenhouse? Even if it were just a large hoop house, it could not only house a worm composting operation, it would provide an invaluable site for gardeners to start their seedlings in spring and extend the growing season spring and fall.
And dare I mention chickens? Can you picture a community garden with chickens, just a mile from the White House? Kids would be lined up around the block to get a look. And the gardeners would have fresh eggs every day.
Well, I’m not sure they’d go for the chickens. But there are all sorts of tantalizing possibilities for making this site a valuable food resource. It’s a blank slate–a completely vacant lot–with tons of room around the perimeter for fruit and nut trees. A landscape architect has been working with the group, and apparently a desire for shade trees has been expressed. But why not trees that feed people? Walnut, hazelnut, chestnut: with very little care, these not only provide shade and valuable carbon sequestration, but shed edible nuts year after year. Cherry, plum, apple, peach, pear, fig thrive in the city. Paw paw has the added virtue of being native to the area.
The group has also requested hedging. But why not berries for hedges? Raspberries, blueberries, black berries, currants: they are all worthy landscape plants, as well as providing a bounty of nutritious food at different times of the year. Fruit and nut trees, berries, perennial vining plants such as grapes or kiwi–all should be features in any modern, sustainable community gardening scheme, to my mind.
On its Facebook page, the Justice Park Community Garden lists the Capitol Area Food Bank as a partner. In fact, 10 percent of the garden–or four plots–are to be set aside for a local food bank. But it was disappointing at last night’s meeting to see only white faces representing an area of the city that is heavily populated with blacks and Hispanics. This garden is one of the most urban of any in the city. It is surrounded by apartment buildings. In fact, the garden site abuts a low-income housing complex.
At one point early in the planning process it was suggested that an effort should be made to go door-to-door, with interpreters if necessary, to encourage people who might benefit most from growing their own food to participate. I wonder if a more valiant outreach effort should not be made. We were told that anyone belonging to the Yahoo! listserv automaticallyqualifies for a garden plot. But as one would-be plot holder noted, many of our neighbors don’t even have computers.
The question sits there waiting to be answered: how do you get the entire community involved?
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, one mile from the White House.
In order to involve the whole community, you need to make them feel curious. This would be my approach: wall off the entire garden area and leave a few holes in the fence so people can peek in. Then, spread the word that only a few will be given the privelege to use the garden. Then, have people available to answer questions from passers by or people from the comunity “who just happened to be passing by” – but don’t be overeager to answer them … When people have to fight to have access to something it feels better in the end. It seems you are disclosing too much – don’t just give it away, make people fight for it ! Especially the less advantaged people in the area, they are highly suspicious of anything handed out to them – they were never given anything nice, so why believe this time it may be different ? Human nature is what it is, dealing with it is an art form. Good luck. I would go for walnut and hazelnut for shade and berries for borders too.
Isnt’t it amazing that we could not leave the land and its smell of compost fast enough to live in the cities and now how hard it is to claim land back for our use ?
“it was disappointing at last night’s meeting to see only white faces representing an area of the city that is heavily populated with blacks and Hispanics” -> or at least, just one Hispanic in attendance.
Nonetheless, I concur that it would be a shame not to at least try to involve the greater community. If folks could taste some of the fantastic stuff that comes out of my backyard, they’d want to grow their own vegetables too!
Ed – great ideas and suggestions here, thanks.
We’d love to hear more about how to do community composting. This is something we thought about, but ultimately didn’t pursue because of concerns over rodent control. Is there a way to do composting of home food scraps without attracting rodents? I’m not sure that a community garden can be a substitute for municipal composting, but please point us to good information sources if you know otherwise.
On the mechanics of plot assignments, this simply hasn’t been decided yet. We’re very aware that not everyone will have access to a yahoo listserv and that we need to do more outreach to make sure there is good community representation in the garden. We certainly don’t want to go forward with plot assignments until there has been more outreach to folks who don’t have computer access. Once that happens, I’m envisioning a potential members meeting sometime this winter where we sit down and figure out how to distribute plots in a fair and equitable way. Now that we’re getting closer to the garden being a reality, it’s time to ramp up those efforts. And we’d welcome everyone’s suggestions on how to do that.
On the fruit trees – I couldn’t agree more! Our initial proposal to DPR was to have lots of fruit trees and berry bushes. They had some concerns about fruit trees in a public garden and we decided to put that question aside for the time being while we focused on overall layout and design. But yes, the berry hedges are a great idea and one we’d hoped to realize as well.
We’ve been mostly in waiting mode as things got sorted out on the partnership and city end, but now that this garden is going to be a reality, it’s time to reengage on this with the wider community. Thanks for starting off this discussion!
Saharah Moon
Justice Park Community Garden Association
What an exciting development!
Yeah, chicken might be pushing, but composting, a greenhouse and edible landscaping ought to work for everybody. It might a matter of educating the landscape architect who’s drawing the plans…
As far as reaching out to your neighbors without computers, may I suggest simple fliers on colorful paper. If you can hook-up with schools, the fliers could go home with kids; left under doors (I know it takes volunteer time!) in apartment buildings – if the property management office is willing, or better left at the property management office; try to hook-up with churches also to leave fliers there, put announcement in their newsletter or even mention by the pastor. What other gathering places exist? even the liquor store (gasp!) might be a good place to leave fliers… Some neighborhood post office will let you hang a fliers (but many can’t or won’t due to regulations)… Are there very local radio station that could make “public announcements”.
Yes, it is a lot of work to reach out, but Ed, this is such an exciting worthwhile project!
Best wishes.
Mariam, I wonder if what you suggest has ever been tried in this situation. I’m not sure it’s an approach that the city government would buy into–or something some people in the community would appreciate–even though it sounds plausible.
Christiana, I hope the rest of the people involved with the garden feel as you do. I trust that they do. They all seem very committed to this.
Saharah, one of the things that has impressed me about this group is how receptive they are to different ideas (other than making this a farm over individual plots). Since this represents a very rare occasion when the city’s parks and recreation department actually creates a new community garden from scratch, I really think you should seize the moment and embrace the latest thinking about sustainable and even permaculture gardening. And, yes, it is quite possible to compost kitchen scraps without inviting rodents.
Sylvie, flyers might definitely be one method. In this situation, I feel there is an obligation on the part of the organizers to make sure no stone goes unturned in notifying neighbors that this opportunity exists. Many immigrants have brought home gardening traditions with them from the countries of origins, and are only lacking the land on which to grow their own food. This would be their chance.
Actually, when this project was first soliciting community input in Jan/Feb 2009, there was effort to go door to door and/or flyer throughout the neighborhood. I think there still will be and folks will be curious once work on the site begins.
I became involved with this project through my work at the Capital Area Food Bank when a call went out on a local listserv to partner with a local garden group (Justice Park Community Gardeners) to help make this happen. It’s really one a of kind for the District and fits in nicely with the mission of the program I work with, Harvest for Health. We just initiated a Grow A Row program and in return for the CAFB helping out, some of the garden produce will go directly to community organizations in Columbia Heights that help those in need. We are excited about this partnership and there is more on our program at our new blog http://www.capitalareafoodbank.org/2009/11/rooted-in-community-%e2%80%9cgrow-a-row%e2%80%9d-sprouts-promise-of-new-connections/
Jody, thanks for explaining the genesis of Capitol Area Food Bank’s involvement. The plan to set four garden plots aside for neighborhood food relief adds an important dimension to the garden and helps anchor it to the community in a very visible way. This is an extremely diverse community–as much as any in the city–and making the effort to have complete representation in the garden in important. All of this sets this particular garden apart from the typical “community garden.”