Entertainment, refreshments and photosynthesis all being arranged for the Parade of Community Gardens

This summer, I am assisting seven St. Paul and Minneapolis bring in neighbors, energy, entertainment, refreshments and photosynthesis together to celebrate and show-off as part of the Parade of Community Gardens. Why go to all this effort? Community gardeners are hard-working folks and by all means they need a day to reflect on their accomplishments and while we are at it, why not invite the neighborhood! The Parade is an awareness raising event, both for the state of Minnesota, and along the streets of each participating garden. Below is the media release from the event's organizer, Gardening Matters where the important role of community gardens in our neighborhoods is highlighted. See you on August 21st!

Gardening Matters Announces the 5^th Annual Parade of Community Gardens

On August 21^st, sixty-six community gardens in the Twin Cities Metro Area and Greater Minnesota will be on parade! Gardening Matters is proud to organize the 5^th Annual Parade of Community Gardens, a state-wide garden “open house” intended for the public to get to know these important community spaces. Participating community gardens invite visitors to take a self-guided tour through their gardens, where they will be hosting celebrations as diverse and vibrant as the gardens themselves. Parade activities in 2010 include food samples, cooking demos, bike repair and composting workshops, youth-led yoga, art, and much more! Download a Parade Brochure for a complete listing of gardens and activities.

This year’s Parade is bigger and better than ever! The Parade is going virtual with all sixty-six gardens mapped on Gardening Matters’ Online Parade Directory, and gardeners will be Tweeting live from the gardens on Parade by tagging #GardenParade. Gardening Matters is also proud to partner with Bike Walk Twin Cities to create several biking and walking routes to gardens. In addition, BWTC is sponsoring a photo contest for pictures of biking or walking to gardens! The Parade of Community Gardens is sponsored by Seward Co-op in Minneapolis and Valley Natural Foods in Burnsville, who will be distributing coupons and prizes at participating community gardens in their areas. Info about these promotions is available at www.gardeningmatters.org

Interest in community gardening has soared nation-wide in 2010 in light of recent environmental, economic, and health concerns. Gardening offers individuals the opportunity to improve personal and community health and their local environment, as well as decrease household food budgets. The health impacts of community gardens are particularly important, as childhood and adult obesity are at pandemic proportions: a recent report released by Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Minnesota Department of Health revealed that 60% of adult Minnesotans are overweight or obese, and 75% do not eat the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables. Community gardens provide a social atmosphere and hands-on opportunity for people of all backgrounds, abilities and experiences to get exercise and access to fresh produce for themselves and their households. In addition, community gardens provide a supportive environment that encourages healthy behavior change.

Community gardening has also become increasingly popular in Minnesota in recent years. Gardening Matters received over 350 requests for community garden space in 2010. The demand for gardening space far outpaces the space available, in spite of the fact that many new community gardens are started every year. In fact, the number of community gardens in Minnesota has increased by at least 50% in recent years, from 200 to over 300. In 2010, both Minneapolis and St. Paul made public land available for community gardening, illustrating the importance of/demand for community gardens to both citizens and municipalities.

Minnesota and the Twin Cities have a rich history of community gardening, with more people participating in gardens over the long-term than most regions nationally. Gardening is not a hobby. It, along with our food traditions, is an important part of our cultural heritage and should be celebrated. The community aspect of community gardening also helps people connect and preserve these important traditions, as well as providing an opportunity for long-time gardeners to teach and share with gardeners who are just getting started.

Join Gardening Matters and the sixty six community gardens on parade in celebrating these valuable neighborhood assets! Gardens on the Parade come in all shapes in sizes, and are located in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Community gardens truly offer something for everyone, and bring many benefits to their neighbors and neighborhoods – take advantage of these neighborhood spaces by celebrating in a community garden near you!

Gardening Matters is a non-profit organization dedicated to successful, sustainable community gardening and the enhancement of neighborhood-based urban agriculture. Gardening Matters programming supports community garden sustainability and places community gardens at the core of a support system for increased home-based food production and neighborhood beautification. In the last five years, Gardening Matters has helped over 2000 people start or join a community garden. Read more about the multiple benefits of community gardening and get a snapshot of community gardening in Minnesota.

Parade of Community Gardens

Date/time: Saturday, August 21^st from 10:00am – 2:00pm. Rain or shine.

Location: Community gardens throughout the Twin Cities Metro Area, Dakota County, Chaska, Rogers, and Mankato! Download the brochure for a map and listing of participating gardens.

Six Hamline-Midway Community Gardens participating in the 5th Annual Parade of Community Gardens!

Bike, walk, run, skate, drive if need be to explore and celebrate a variety of green spaces and the bugs that help them grow on the Hamline-Midway Bugs n’ Bikes Community Garden Tour! Saturday, August 21 10am-2pm, six Hamline-Midway community gardens will offer fun, educational, and creative activities and treats for all ages as part of the 5th annual Parade of Community Gardens. Stop by any location to start your tour and pick up a map and schedule of events. Locations include:

• Hamline-Thomas Community Garden at Hamline and Thomas Avenues
• Hamline United Methodist Church at 1514 Englewood Ave
• SPROUTS Community Gardens at 1514 Englewood Ave
• Horton Park at Minnehaha and Hamline Avenues
• Midway GreenSpirit Community Garden off of Pierce Butler between Hamline Avenue and Albert Street
• Snelling Avenue Planters at Hamline Hardware at 755 Snelling Ave N

For further information or to get involved with these Midway garden sites and their events, please email junelune1@gmail.com.

Need more hands in your community garden? Part 2

Encouraging people to turn out for a community planting is a constant job for community garden leaders. Often, there is a substantial list of garden tasks, and too slim of hands to tackle them. Folks do want to participate, but often life is busy and there are many competing interests for our time.

This is a second in a series of posts that are focused on finding more hands for your community garden. Your efforts in planning these now will be a boon for your community garden later in the season (just when your regulars are getting tired out). Ten, one-time volunteers can take care of a task that would require 2 people to do all day. This fact makes these bigger work days more fun for your regulars as they both get to do something different and achieve sense of accomplishment feels like "Extreme Makeover". Examples of good tasks for a one-time larger group include trash pick-up, watering, mulching, deadheading, planting, edging beds, weeding fence lines, weeding out one particular weed. These are all simple, repetitive gardening techniques that you can show folks how-to do in a quick lesson.

This second tip in the "Need more hands" series suggests connecting to local colleges (and even high schools). Colleges and Universities can be bureaucratic to wade through, but there is usually multiple avenues to reach willing 15-20 year old volunteers. Many folks in the age group very much want to contribute, and a growing proportion want to learn sustainable gardening.


Here are some tricks to connecting to school crews:

• One tricky element about this suggestion is the fact that many student volunteers are tied to the academic year only, which means their available time does not greatly an overlap to the growing season. Its still worth recruiting however, because these volunteers are energetic! Further, their available dates are often the beginning and the end of the growing season, just when there happens to be bigger tasks related to garden openings and closings. Because of the differences in calendars, you will probably have to locate a new crew for each work date you arrange.

• You may likely need to plan these community service dates involving students well in advance, often in the previous term. This can be hard to remember in the spring rush of garden tasks that you also need to connect with your teachers for the Fall events! For example, This week, The Snelling Avenue Planter Project just made some connections for a Hamline University crew who will be performing community service, in early September. Another example in the Twin Cities is the U of MN's Welcome Week which involves their incoming freshmen in community service.

• To find a student volunteer(s) that will be able to volunteer repeatedly, you will need to find students required to do service for class credit (like Service Learning departments, course projects, capstone projects, senior thesis, and even Eagle scout & 4H projects). This type of student volunteer can tackle other garden needs beyond hauling wood chip such as making a flier, cleaning the garden's tools, write, research, apply for grants, and more.
  

• To begin tapping into to this potential source of volunteers, you need to ask amongst other organizations how they reach students, and also call around to the schools asking if their students do community service. Places to hunt on campus include service learning departments, student orientation events, student governments, student groups, restorative justice programs, resident housing, fraternities, community relations offices, alumni organizations, and of course, particular department offices (or even professors) which have majors that relate to your garden project.
  

• Once you find a route to interested student volunteers, try to make these connections institutionalized. It is important to find out the permanent staff person who is ultimately in charge of the students, and even try to get a face-to-face meeting with them. Many college departments rely on student workers to pull together community service projects. So once that student worker graduates or finish working at that department, then you have lost that connection. You will gain more return on your time investment if you can come back to that department/professor year-after-year. Once the college knows about your project and that community service will be successful, then they will start calling you!

Photo Caption: A service learner from the University of Minnesota looks over one of Horton Park's serviceberry trees scouting for insects amongst the native plantings installed by the Friends of Horton Park. Sarah worked for 24 hours in the community gardens over spring 09 term.