A community garden helping to feed many in the Cleveland neighborhoods
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CLEVELAND -- More than a dozen teenage boys are helping grow fresh fruits and vegetables for Cleveland Neighborhoods.
The Garden Boyz Community Garden is located on Cedar near East 77th Street in Cleveland's Central Neighborhood.
Once a vacant lot, it is now full of potential.
The boys are from the Arbor Park Village Community and work alongside adult volunteers planting food.
"We have lots of cucumbers. We have some sugar snap peas. We have green beans at the far end. We are just starting a berry patch too," says Sharon Glaspie, Building Healthy Communities director.
She started this near-acre garden last year and there is a second garden a few miles away.
FreshLink is the core research project for the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods at Case Western Reserve University. It links this and similar community gardens with people who need fresh foods by promoting the gardens.
Dallas church grows as community garden feeds neighbors
episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2011/11/22/dallas-church-grows-in-relevance-as-community-garden-feeds-neighbors/
Members of the tiny Episcopal Church of Our Saviour asked themselves this question eight years ago: If the church closed, would it be missed?
The answer, congregants sadly agreed, was no. They cast about for ideas to help the church connect with the surrounding neighborhood, eventually deciding to start a community garden as an outreach ministry. It was truly a leap of faith in 2003, well before the “eat local” craze and before Michelle Obama planted an organic garden on the White House lawn.
Church members chose the project for one simple reason: “We had no money,” said garden coordinator Becky Smith.
The only thing they had was land; the one-story brick church sits on four acres in Pleasant Grove, an older, lower-income neighborhood eight miles from the glittering skyline of downtown Dallas. And they had Smith, a lifelong gardener whose mother descended from sharecroppers in rural Arkansas.
Our Saviour members recall how amazed they were when crops from
six 10-by-24-foot plots yielded more than 1,000 pounds of vegetables the first year. They donated the crops to a nearby food pantry, reversing the sense of irrelevance they’d had just a year earlier.
University’s community garden helps feed neighborhood residents
www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/6398
Community gardens provide neighbors with food, fellowship and fun. For the second consecutive season, some 30 people are working in a garden at the main campus of Regis University in the Berkeley neighborhood of northwest Denver.
Volunteers tending the garden include neighborhood residents, parishioners of St. John Francis Regis Chapel, and university staff and students.
“We have more students this year,” said Joe Kottenstette, a founding member of the steering committee, “and I think getting young people involved in organic gardening is neat.
“It’s a good skill to have … people need access to good food and one of the best ways to make that happen is to teach them how to grow their own.”
The 200-foot-by-65-foot garden is on the northwest corner of Regis’ property on Lowell Boulevard between 52nd and 53rd avenues. Half of the space is dedicated to
24 11-foot-by-16-foot plots filled with vegetables and fruits, while the other half is a common space with picnic tables, native plants and herb beds.
Kottenstette, 55, lives in the Berkeley neighborhood and worships at Regis Chapel. He has been involved with the garden since its planning stages.
COMMUNITY GARDENS
www.yndc.org/programs/lots-green/neighborhood-gardens
Community Gardens provide space and support for neighborhood residents to grow food to feed their families. Currently, the YNDC supports five community gardens - four in the Idora neighborhood (on Parkview, Sherwood, Brentwood, and Mineral Springs Ave.) and one in the Lincoln Park neighborhood (at the intersection of Rigby St. and S. Jackson Ave.). The gardens are open to the public, and garden plots can be reserved through the YNDC.
The YNDC provides plants, seeds, tools, and water for community gardeners, as well as educational programming during summer months. The gardens will be officially open for the 2012 season beginning in Mid-April.
For more information on the community gardens or to reserve a garden plot, please email Liberty Merrill at
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by calling the YNDC office at 330.480.0423.
Community Gardens by State, Province, and Country -
www.communitygarden.org/connect/links.php
Finding a Community Garden -
www.bostonnatural.org/cgFind.htm
Find a Garden Near You -
www.cacscw.org/get_a_garden.php
