The Neighborhood Garden Project

Deanna Glick, a blogger for the multi-blogger blog (that I happen to read religiously) Green Daily, is starting a project with her friends called The Neighborhood Garden Project.  My wife, Kelly and I have been talking a lot about a home veggie garden and trying to plot our strategy.  Around the time we were first discussing it, I emailed our local town government and inquired about a community garden.  Nope - none exists.  I didn’t think much about it again.  This past Wednesday night, I went to Chicago Green Drinks where the topic was about farming and urban gardens.  Then this morning I was watching The Sierra Club Chronicles and it was all about community gardens.  Now I read about Deanna’s project.  It must be a sign. 

Like I said, Kelly and I have been talking about our forthcoming veggie garden for the past few months.  We have the usual perennials and shrubs now, but nothing edible.  I’ve had the itch for a long time and I think the past year of her reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and other eco-books has convinced her that it’s time to take action.  We had a CSA membership last year, but didn’t like it much.  This year, we decided in addition to our own garden, we’ll use the money we spent weekly on the CSA and combine that with what we spent at the farmer’s market to spend more at the local farmer’s market getting greens we want to eat, yet still helping out and eating locally.

I grew up on a small farm - I guess you could call it a hobby farm.  It wasn’t out livelyhood or anything, but it was a lot bigger than the 1/3 acre that I live on now.  We always had a very large garden with fresh vegetables.  I didn’t fully appreciate what I had back then.  We were locavores on the 100 yard diet.  We ate pork, beef, and a slew of vegetables all raised within 100 yards of the house (and even drank goat’s milk instead of cow’s since we had a goat to milk).  Although I moved away from that environment when I was 15yrs old, it makes me the resident farmer expert (even if I’m far from it).  To be honest, we’ll be relying on the little I know paired with projects such as The Neighborhood Garden Project and Katie & Chris over at Gardenpunks (and probably friends and family…and of course…Google).

The Neighborhood Garden Project is really intriguing.  It almost reminds me of EcoMoms that has been getting so much attention lately.  There are womens clubs, moms clubs, gourmet dinner clubs, bridge clubs and so on.  Now there is a group of women neighbors starting their own micro-garden club together.  It’s not your typical garden club where you learn about plants at a monthly meeting and have a plant sale.  It’s a hands-on social club. Deanna and her neighbors are starting a small community garden right in her own backyard - literally in on her property.  From the video, the project is in it’s infancy with the garden just starting out.  It’s going to be exciting watching her progress (and hopefully my own progress). 

In some urban cities of the country, there are eco-terrorists - or “green guerrillas” who go to a vacant lot under darkness and plant a garden. All of these ideas are very intriguing to me.  Behind my house there is a large dry retention basin.  Just beyond that is a stretch of land that has been on the city drawings to be a road since the 1970’s.   It’s still sitting there vacant.  Just weeds.  Should I contact the village and ask permission or just start growing stuff there?  What if I just scattered seeds there and see what grows naturally?  Hrmm… so much to ponder.  Good luck with your new club, Deanna.  I hope you start a trend!

The Neighborhood Garden Project

Source: Green Daily