Slow Food Community Garden Collaborative

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Comment by Rich Deming on February 1, 2010 at 9:52pm

I took a little walk through our Friendship Trays garden Sunday afternoon to contemplate the garden season past and future. Other than the running water of snow melt leaking out of a cracked pipe in our water harvesting system, and hopefully some unseen activity in the compost bins, everything was very quiet.

I have been severely remiss in keeping up this page. That is a vast understatement, and those of you who know me understand this isn’t a problem I usually suffer from.

But if I have been lazy in updating our progress, we have been extremely busy in the garden and in building a future for this and other community gardens in Charlotte.

To recap what we’ve done in the last six months:

--Kicked the Friendship Trays garden into high gear: we spent all the money we raised last year, and then some, and helped build a beautiful garden at the Friendship Trays. If you haven’t yet, when it gets nice you should come out and see it! It’s a very nice space.

--Working closely with the team at Friendship Trays, we’ve laid the groundwork to expand the garden to create some serious food production possibilities. We’ve established good relations with the neighbors—who might think we are a bit peculiar, situated in our little industrial nook-- and have sign off to clear out scrub and use land to grow and roofs for water all up and down this area.

--We had a smash up party, the start of a new tradition, and had a lot of fun and raised money for Friendship Trays and the garden.

--We established a network of other community gardens in the city. Using our funds and labor, we have helped the gardens at Area15, off North Davidson, and Irwin Creek Community Garden, by Revolution Park, establish a foothold. We have formed relationships with community gardens at Moore’s Place—the future residential component of the Urban Ministry—and Hope Haven.

--And most recently, we have applied for a large grant from the Woman’s Impact Fund to tie these efforts together and supercharge our efforts going forward. This grant would help us form a network of community gardens around town, with funding and expertise and sweat. In return, these gardens will provide a truly meaningful amount of fresh produce to put into the Meals-on-Wheels that Friendship Trays deliver to the disadvantaged all over the city. The grant will help us buy dirt and infrastructure and expertise and worms and did I mention dirt? Lots of dirt……

The nice thing is that writing this grant got us focused on where we want to take our Slow Food Community Garden Collaborative. We sort of knew, but now we have a serious plan! So the Woman’s Impact Fund has already done us a real service. But if we happened to get some funding to make the plan a reality this year and next, well, that’d be just swell too. Cross your fingers and hope for us; or if you happen to have a vote at WIF, lobby your friend’s and vote for us!

Comment by George Berger on July 10, 2009 at 10:08am

Thanks, Rich! I appreciate the info, and will pass it along. The good thing is that most of us are affiliated in some way with SFC, either directly or through our association and involvement with the Davidson Farmers' Market. And so we're not in need of funds (thanks to SFC for the donation to the DFM from Ark of Taste!); information, however, is another matter. Let's talk more later, but perhaps you could post the locations (and any web-based info) for the sites, and we'll start by looking!

Thanks again!

Comment by Rich Deming on July 10, 2009 at 9:59am

Hi George,

We'd be happy to help in any way we can. To be totally honest, we're getting stretched a bit thin--we have two more gardens that we are assisting now, which brings the total we are trying to digest this first year to four. We've spread most of the funds we've raised around the gardens and now we're planning our way to raise some more.

This is very early, but we are planning a nice fundraising effort for the week before Halloween, and as a part of that we want to have some speakers/workshops. So that might be an excellent way to spread the good CG word.

As for a tour, I can direct you to the sites of any of our gardens. Perhaps we can coordinate on a Saturday work day to make scheduling easier for one of us to be around.

Also, there is no going rate for any of our gardens....they are free. But that model wouldn't work in some places.

Cheers, Rich

Comment by George Berger on July 10, 2009 at 9:50am

In Davidson, there is a small group (myself included) who're doing the initial planning for a community garden on the property of St. Alban's Episcopal Church. We'd love some assistance--including, as the 'specific question of the day.' what the "going rate" is for area CG rental plots.

It'd also be cool if we could tour some gardens, and/or have a CG organizer/facilitator speak to our organizing group about...well, strategies for organization.

Please feel free to contact me (George Berger) at your convenience, at 704/896-1704 (h) or bergers.in.nc@gmail.com Thanks very much!

Comment by Donna Thrasher on May 11, 2009 at 4:36am

I recommend reading Grace From the Garden, Changing the World One Garden at a Time by Debra Landwehr Engle. Written in 2003, its a little book about real gardens & real garden projects - that teach, nourish, unite, inspire, & heal and with lots of ideas of what our community could do.

Comment by Rich Deming on May 10, 2009 at 9:30am

And a couple of other things (see previous comment)........You might want to join this group to stay posted....there are going to be a lot of seriously groovy things going on in the coming season.

Secondly, For each of our gardens, I would like to develop a sign to acknowledge contributors. I don't want anything obnoxious, just a little something to say thanks to groups that have helped. Maybe something like "This garden has been created with the help of Slow Food Charlotte and:...." and a list of sponsors. Earthfare, for example, needs some large size kudos for their support.

Maybe something that would allow us to add more sponsors to the list as it grows---little hanging signs or something.

By the way, Denise donated a cool statue to the FT garden. If anyone has anything else that would add to the ambiance--say, wind chimes or something--let me know.

I'd like something for the sign that's different and artsy and maybe a little funky--the pallet raised beds aren't exactly corporate, so we might as well keep the theme.

Let me know if you have any ideas!

Comment by Rich Deming on May 10, 2009 at 9:19am

The mission expands and just generally gets cooler! We've been in discussion for a couple of weeks now about working with Friendship Trays to make their community garden a special place. FT is a wonderful organization here in town that I don't even want to start describing because I won't do it justice---check out their website at the link below. But the collaboration between FT and our collaboration was a no-brainer. You can't get more local---the veggies will practically walk themselves the 100 yards to the FT kitchens--and it would be impossible to find a project that better fits what urban gardening should be about.
After collecting supplies on Friday, we got down to business making raised beds and starting the water collection system yesterday. We had four people there--Steve from FT and Bre from Bank of America's volunteer program and Slow Foodie in her own right. And Matt and myself.
We have the 825 gallons of water catchment tankage in place and the plumbing to the tanks almost done--going to finish them up Monday evening. And we've started converting used pallets from the Friendship kitchen into raised beds.
All and all, it's going to be a really nice joint project--the mind is bubbling over with ideas for it. And in case anyone wants to help on the next workday (next Saturday, 10-4), we instituted the new Slow Food work day policy of providing lunch---I'm going to drag a grill over there and we'll have a little potluck lunch at the nice shady picnic table.
Check out the diary (Steve, you are very fast and efficient....) at

http://www.friendshiptrays.org/Gardens/Diary/DiaryMain.htm

Cheers!

Comment by Lynn S. Caldwell on April 18, 2009 at 6:31pm

Hey friends, Rich and I went to Lowe's this afternoon and got supplies to put the raised beds together at The Tailgate tomorrow morning. Lucy (my extremely helpful 5 year old) and I are going to meet Rich at The Tailgate around 10 am to assemble two 4x12 raised beds. If you find yourself wondering what to do after coffee, brunch, or early church then feel free to stop by and lend a hand, even if it just for 30 minutes or so... thanks!

Hope to see you at the opening of the market next weekend!

Comment by Rich Deming on April 13, 2009 at 6:51pm

Actually, I should have been clearer....I think we're all going to be working on most Saturdays coming up, except this one. It's Earth Day weekend, and Slow Food is doing a big tent to raise funds at the Clean and Green event at CPCC's downtown campus.

If you want to volunteer to help there...that's wonderful. Check out Thom's announcement on the front page. I'll post some locations and volunteer needs shortly after that event for the other gardens! Cheers, Rich

Comment by Juliana on April 13, 2009 at 2:15pm

HI Richard.
Thanks for keeping us update. I can work on Saturdays. I am looking for putting my hands a little bit dirty.....

Let me know where I have to go and at what time.

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