I’m fascinated by your urban ministry garden. As a member of NCSU’s community garden research team and community psychologist I’m very interested in gardener’s perceptions of their community garden. Consequently, I’ve created a survey to try to gather more data on the subject but I need help getting the survey to gardeners. The link to the survey is http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=nXMet3Thd4z1o2lQcvpFaQ_3d_3d

I would love to talk with you more about this research and about the urban ministry garden.

Very best,
Seb Prohn
Psychology in the Public Interest
North Carolina State University

Thanks.

Interesting! I’d like to see us have a tent city here in Charlotte.

Right off the top, I’d have three suggestions about resources and research, then some odds and ends suggestions:

Contact the American Community Gardening Association, http://www.communitygarden.org. They are a coalition of community garden groups around the country, and a good place to start looking for resources. The organization itself may or may not be all that helpful – they have recently moved, have a new ED, and are still sorting things out – but the membership is a gold mine of experience and good will, and still the best place to find like-minded people to bounce ideas off. ACGA is certainly worth joining and supporting. Their current pres, James Kuhns, may know about a garden for the homeless in Toronto.

Try Yvonne Savio in L.A. County at the UC Cooperative Extension office. She has successfully run community gardening programs and can put you in touch with some very good folks out in Southern California who can help with both technical gardening and with organizing ideas (David King down in Venice, Teague Weybright in L.A.)

Check around to see if Seattle has anything interesting going on. They have probably the best organized city-wide community gardening program in the country, and they also have a tent city. Don’t know if any links have happened yet.

Also, I’d want to have the site’s soil tested for heavy metals, if you are in an urban area. Just to be safe. You usually can get that done as a donation, I’d check with a nearby college and/or Extension.

Start small, even just with a corner of the proposed garden area. Importantly, if you want to grow food you’ll need reliable water, so solve that problem as a top priority.

And pay attention to improving the soil with the best compost you can find (we got donations from our County’s yard waste facility – I’d avoid biosolid-based compost if you can, though there are hot debates about that now…). Compost means the broken down, black, rich stuff used to improve soil, not “mulch”, ground up bark laid on the ground. If this vocabulary is really alien to you, get a knowledgeable person (urban farmer from a Farmers’ Market, extension agent, very experienced gardener…) to help you.

You don’t need to make boxes for your beds, which costs $$$ – unless the underlying soil is just impossible to work.

On design, involve the people who will be gardening as soon as you can, including reps from the tent city residents. Decide on whether you want the garden to be a group project, where volunteers and residents of the tent city join forces to grow food for distribution – like a coop farm – or if you want to set up individual plots. We have something of a hybrid, though we began as a group project.

The neighbors (homeless folks) who come to us have asked repeatedly for individual plots, though we’re not sure how that would work. Our compromise has been to create a “you pick” section open to all for picking (as opposed to harvesting for the soup kitchen). This has worked well, at least in terms of keeping people from “ripping off” the soup kitchen garden, which became an issue for volunteers and neighbors involved in the garden. What would happen is neighbors would work hard, then have all the tomatoes disappear the night before harvest when somebody who hadn’t helped at all would pick and go sell the produce. Instead, now, anyone can pick whatever they want from the You Pick garden, and the “main garden” is pretty much left alone.

I’ve gone on too long, sorry – send me any questions, I’d be glad to help. I grew up in the west San Fernando Valley where my dad still lives, so sometime when I’m out to visit him maybe I can drop by. Send some pics. I’ve found blogging about the garden is good to do, and opens some good contacts – you might want to try it?

Good luck!!

It will be great to see you. I’ll send you more information by email.

Anyone is welcome to come visit or (even better…) volunteer. I’m slowly getting a regular support group going of community volunteers (guerrilla gardeners).

We have four more-or-less linked objectives in our gardening program – giving people a place where they are welcome to garden whatever their life situation, growing food for the community and individuals (delicious, fresh, organic food), setting an ecologically sound and sustainable environmental example in our entire landscape, and creating a beautiful, welcoming and spiritually sustaining place that supports people’s efforts to live in dignity, seek peace, and transform their lives.

Our most basic objective is that of the Center overall, to provide a ministry of presence serving our neighbors who face homelessness and extreme poverty. “Ministry of presence” is a fancy way of saying being there with people, listening deeply without judging or blaming, and working together as good neighbors to meet human needs, connect with resources, and support positive transformation.

We translate this into reality by doing things like planting lettuce, turning compost, painting rubble to create urban art, putting lime down where a few folks insist on peeing in spite of my complaints and at least 8 accessible bathrooms at the Center. We need some kind of port-a-john (or pissoir, like the French use), but I sure wish the edge of the nursery area was less of a target. So to speak. I mean, nitrogen works wonders, but not in the form and location it’s being applied.

So, our garden is where rhetoric and reality meet, check each other out, and sometimes find common ground. Messy and frustrating at times, but ultimately satisfying and hopeful.

I work with a soup kitchen urban farming program in Detroit and we are beginning to have more of the guests from the kitchen become involved in the gardens. I am going to be in Charlotte in May and am excited about the possibility of working and learning from you all. When are the best times to visit and volunteer with you all? I will be in Charlotte from May 22 until May 26. Many blessings.
Peace,
Lisa