The End of Community Gardening as We Know It?

It may be that the winter doldrums are in full force but  it seems that everything I read recently or issues that come up about community gardening are changing what the term means. When movements mature they are often co-opted, commercialized or changed by various forces. Community Gardening has all of those forces at play. People want to call all kinds of things community gardening that maybe should not be. Urban Agriculture is the term du jour. Almost everyone loves talking about urban agriculture. Local food, locavores, artisanal food products are all words that get lots of play in the media as they point out the ways to commercialize urban agriculture. Community gardeners have been caught up in the wave and brought to the marketplace. A community garden that isn't selling some of their produce is not taking advantage of the opportunities out there to make money. All of the other value that community gardening brings to a livable city is overshadowed by the value of the produce that is sold.

There is a lot of conflict about selling produce grown on community garden land, not the least of which is the use of municipal land for 'profit'. I put profit in quotes because for the most part we are talking about relatively small sums of money and no one I know is getting rich selling tomatoes, basil or eggs from a community garden. Much like many farmers are operating on small profit margins and not getting rich or even paying the bills without someone in the family working off farm to provide health insurance or helping to pay the mortgage. Even so the city agencies that own the land are looking hard at the use of public land for profit. There great programs that work on high school grounds utilizing the garden to teach all kinds of subject matter and in some cases supplying food to school cafeterias. Once they begin to sell some of the produce at little farm stands to support the program there is now cash around and everybody wants a piece. A perfect example of how the community benefits of an urban agriculture project is trumped by how much money is made by the program.

Those touted as visionaries are the ones that are growing food on rooftops. Absolutely, there is a place for rooftop farms. They can make money by supplying fancy restaurants and selling at small markets but their inputs are higher than in the ground farmers so thy have to charge a higher price to make a profit. They also have to think big. The size of the largest urban farm keeps increasing from 40,000 square feet to now 100,000 square feet . There are economies of scale and  in terms of local food security these large projects are necessary to provide more than a fraction of a percent of the fresh food needs of the city.

Why all of the talk about rooftops? What is the connection to community gardens? Community gardeners see the notoriety that rooftop farming and urban agriculture is getting and once again see that their efforts and the benefits of community gardens are not valued. My concern is that city planners and politicians will decree that the only thing that matters is the bottom line. If taken to the extreme, it could get to the point where all government and foundation support vanishes and the land goes to the person or business that has the best plan for making money and being self supporting. Those most in need will be left fighting on the ground for the crumbs while those higher up off the ground both literally and financially will get the fancy crops.

I hope it does not come to this but once again community gardeners' volunteer time and effort must go to being constantly vigilant to what is going on around the city and not letting their efforts be disregarded.

Continuing Threats to Community Gardens

Once again we have been reminded that there are people out there who don't think community gardens are a good idea.  The news of two different threats this past week to community gardens in Philadelphia and Camden make us realize that community gardens, even ones that have been in existence for many years face threats from a variety of sources. In the Camden case it is the state of New Jersey. While not a typical community garden, the Camden Children's Garden, in existence since 1999, is run by the non- profit Camden Garden Club, has 100,000 visitors a year and runs environmental and nutritional programs on the site which started as a "horticultural playground". Aren't community gardens horticultural playgrounds?

The state wants to transfer the land to the private aquarium on the adjacent property, so there may be a monetary motive involved. The Camden Children's Garden has not had an agreement or a lease with the state even though there is a butterfly house and a gazebo on the property. What did the state of New Jersey think was going on here? In addition to the Children's garden, the Camden City Garden Club has been assisting Camden residents interested in starting community gardens with tools, seeds, plants and workshops since 1985.

This news came just days after a report that the Philadelphia City Council backed away from a plan to limit community gardens and urban agriculture in mixed use commercially zoned areas. Gardeners and urban farmers would have to get approval from the zoning board to operate in these mixed use areas. It took a campaign by Philadelphia community gardeners and garden supporters to fight this threat and convince the City Council to change their thinking. The fact that both cities have a surplus of vacant land makes these two stories seem even more unbelievable.

The situation in Philadelphia should never have gotten to the point that required gardeners to have to fight this threat. However there are are always politicians and bureaucrats that see community gardeners as a threat or as a cash cow.  It seems like no amount of good will that community gardeners earn by providing volunteer time to clean up and bring a positive use to land abandoned or neglected by the city can convince some people of the benefits of community gardens. Thankfully most can be convinced as they were in Philadelphia by campaigns that win over public opinion.  Hopefully the situation in Camden will be resolved like the one across the Delaware.

Raise Some Funds for Your Community Garden

This is the perfect time to raise money for a community garden. Even with our warmer than ever winter, there is not a lot to do in the garden and many days are too cold, too damp or too windy to spend time in the garden. So it is a great time for planning or ordering seeds or plants and finding the money to pay for all of those plans and plants. A few grant announcements have come my way in the past week which I will pass along.

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The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) has partnered with the Darden Restaurants Foundation to make available grants  for community gardens that benefit families and individuals of low-income status. This would be a great opportunity to obtain funds to help build or expand a community garden that fosters stewardship and outdoor activity while donating the produce to those in need. The grants will range from $2,500 to $7,500 and will be awarded to 10 communities.

The application deadline is Wednesday, February 6, 2013 and you can find out more about the grant and benefits of community gardens here.

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All About the Fruits and Veggies Grant Program
Sponsor: Jamba Juice & the National Gardening Association

Please contact the National Gardening Association's Kids Gardening for more information and to apply for this funding:

The All About the Fruits and Veggies grant program will provide youth garden initiatives with gardening supplies, curriculum, soil amendments, and plants to help create engaging nutrition and gardening experiences.

Awards of $500 worth of materials will be granted to forty youth and school garden programs. Schools, community organizations, and nonprofit gardening programs with at least fifteen children between the ages of 3 and 18 are eligible to apply.

Deadline: February 18, 2013

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For New York City groups:

Have a Great Idea for a Community Project?

Through their Community Grants , Citizens Committee awards grants of $500-$3,000 to resident-led groups to work on community and school improvement projects addressing issues that they identiy as important to them.

Projects that have been funded in the past are as varied as community gardening, theater and fine arts, nutrition awareness, composting, beautification, tenant organizing, youth education, physical fitness, public safety, and more.

Read their grant guidelines and download the application . The application deadline is January 31, 2013

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These are just a few grant opportunities but there are many more possibilities. Most areas have garden clubs that disburse funds for different types of projects including community gardens. There are local sources including local related businesses like garden centers, hardware stores, banks or grocery stores. The important first step is to decide what you want to do with the funds. It could be money for events, a toolshed, tools to put in the shed, printing costs for flyers, plants or seeds. Create a letter stating the need and the expected results. Now you are ready to find those funds. It may not happen right away but from my experience planning ahead and being ready with the ask means that when the opportunity presents itself, you can take advantage.
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A good resource to help if you are just getting started or want to gather good information to add to your letter or grant proposal is a new fact sheet from the Local Government Commission, Cultivating Community Gardens .  The folks who get the help are the ones who ask. So don't be afraid to ask. 

The Year in Community Gardening

This is the week when everyone reviews the year that just passed and makes top ten list and best of lists. It would be nearly impossible and possibly unfair to come up with a best of or top ten list of community gardens.

2012 was notable for community gardens for several reasons. This was the year that the policies that have gone into effect over the last several years have been tested and from all the reports have passed with little problems. Maybe not earth shattering news but it is important that these policies prove worthwhile to politicians and city bureaucrats as well as useful for community gardeners.   For community gardens to be sustainable one piece of the puzzle is policies that work - not too restrictive while making the municipality supportive.

Research on urban agriculture and community gardening continues at a brisk pace, most notably this year the Five Borough Farm Project and the Michigan State University Metro Food Innovation Cluster at Detroit  looked at what is happening in New York and Detroit respectively while making proposals for future direction.  It might be better if this research money went directly into community garden programs but if this research leads to even more dollars in the future then it will be money well spent.

Hurricane Sandy was also big news for community gardens in New York City. My blog post on the subject covers the details. Once again community gardens are a microcosm of the our world. Climate change threatens community gardens just as it threatens the earth. Maybe we can find some solutions  to prepare community gardens for future climate change that will work for us all.

This was a great year for me as a presenter. I made presentations about policy, rainwater harvesting and sustainable community gardens. Probably the most fun was doing a presentation about the bicycle powered water pump at the World Maker Faire . So now I am officially a Maker.

As in most years there are positive and negative events that happen over the course of a year. 2012 fits right there with the good, bad and ugly of years. Let's look forward to next year being one that is healthy for community gardening and community gardeners.

Sandy and New York City Community Gardens

First of all I must apologize for the amount of time between posts. Maybe it is blogger's block, if there is such a thing but also sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. I do have to wait on line to use the computer. My kids homework trumps dad's use of the computer.

I have been mulling over what to say about Sandy and the community gardens. I live on Staten Island and was directly if only slightly affected by the storm. Some of my fellow Staten Islanders lost their homes and in some cases their lives. The effects of the storm still linger for many. Oddly we had no damage due to Sandy (we lost electricity for 28 hours - short enough to be a novelty and not long enough to cause major inconveniences) but a large cherry tree came down in the Northeaster storm the following week. The tree still had it leaves and the wet snow and a gust of wind took it down. It disconnected our neighbors and our electric and cable lines but only caused minor damage to our garden and none to our house. This 30 inch diameter trunk even fell neatly between 2 beloved rose bushes I had pruned just a week earlier.

Large Cherry Tree,  Front of My Home, Staten Island

Some of the community gardens fared much worse but on the whole most avoided damage from the storm. In fact I know of one garden with solar panels where the gardeners were able to charge their cell phones as they waited up to 2 weeks for the electricity in their apartments to be restored. Chalk one up for sustainability initiatives in community gardens.

Culinary Kids Garden, Far Rockaway, Queens, Debris and Intact Rainwater Harvesting System

In the low lying areas of Coney Island, Far Rockaway, Red Hook and the Lower  East Side, the community gardens were flooded with up to 12 feet of water which brought with it all kinds of debris, sewage and whatever the ocean, river and bay were carrying. Fallen trees also caused damage in these gardens as well as other gardens inland in neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

College Avenue Garden, the Bronx, Downed Trees

The flooded gardens have been advised not to eat anything that was flooded and not to grow anything in inundated soil for at least 60 days. That's not bad considering that the 60 days will fall in November, December and January when little grows in the gardens here. In several gardens that I visited after the storm there were sewage and petroleum smells which tells me that there may be cause for caution growing vegetables this spring in some of these areas.

Debris, Campos Garden, Lower East Side, Manhattan

Like my home some community gardens lost large trees and limbs which caused everything from minor inconvenience to lost plants to damage to structures, fences and raised beds. New York City's Green Thumb program and Parks Department helped remove some of the larger trees and limbs and some gardeners and helpers from the community took care of smaller trees on their own but much more work needs to be done to cut up and chip branches and to assess and prune trees that may be vulnerable to future storms.

Damaged Raised beds and Inundated Soil,  Campos Garden

Community Gardens that were inundated with debris have been cleaning up on their own with assistance from volunteers from all over. Often the community gardeners were overwhelmed with volunteers and did not have enough tools, gloves and garbage bags to get the job done. The organization I work for, GrowNYC helped with some of these things but we had supplies to assist only a couple of gardens. GrowNYC was also hampered by the fact that the vehicle we use, Grow Truck, was parked on a pier on the East River where it was flooded and became unusable.

Downed Tree and Damaged Shed, Villa Santurce Garden, Manhattan

More work needs to be done and the community gardeners and non profit organizations are planning for the spring when the gardens will need to repair and improve infrastructure and plantings and prepare the community gardeners so that in future storms the impact will not be as great.

Damaged Fence, El Sitio Feliz, Manhattan

So what is needed is not just to replace what was but to rethink the use of some materials and plants and to use storm resistant species and materials. Planting smaller trees like dwarf fruit trees as an example. Using plastic and composite lumber instead of wood will hopefully keep the raised beds in place if flooded again. Existing trees will need to be pruned preemptively to remove any limbs that are in danger of falling in future storms.

Inundated Soil, Battery Urban Farm, Manhattan

Other than the experienced labor to accomplish these tasks like tree climbers and pruners the most important thing needed is the dollars to pay for these services and the tools and materials needed to make the necessary repairs and improvements. Hopefully next time there will be a much happier story to tell

Community Garden Chickens

This week brought some news that while not unexpected was troubling. The New York Times reported that in a sampling of eggs from community garden chickens elevated lead levels were found in a significant number of the eggs. Of the 58 eggs tested, 28 of them showed some amount of lead with the article reporting that the levels were from 10 to over 100 parts per billion in one egg.

The researchers from the New York State Department of Health were still looking at the results to determine if the lead was from the soil, feed or some other source. There wasn't a call to place a ban on the community garden chickens but the researchers did instruct the chicken keepers on how to minimize lead exposure.

This is very different from a recent brouhaha at some of the school gardens in NYC where a lead test performed by the city's education department showed the soil unfit for unrestricted use.  It is almost impossible for urban soils to pass the test for unrestricted use with most tests falling in the restricted use range.  This is something that urban gardeners have been aware of for almost 40 years.  Cornell Cooperative Extension has long had a fact sheet available on urban soils and what precautions to take when dealing with possibly contaminated soil.

I have dealt with this issue in previous posts on this blog and the conclusion I made then applies here as well. In community gardens that have been in existence for a number of years where the community gardeners have worked to build a healthy soil by adding compost and not using chemical pesticides and fertilizers,  heavy metals and other contaminants are much less of a problem. Long term sustainability is the key.

While some community gardens have had chickens for many years, widespread chicken keeping has happened over the last several years. Now finding lead levels in half of the eggs tested may mean that there is a big problem here but the eggs tested were from community gardens where the researchers had access so it was not a comprehensive or strictly scientific study.

Most of the soil used to grow vegetables in New York City Community gardens is soil brought in from outside the city so edibles are not grown in the native rubble soil that most community gardens are built on. Chickens that are roaming free in a garden or living in a coop built on the native soil can easily be exposed to high lead levels as they dig for insects, grubs and worms. With a little bit of work and careful attention to where the chicken coops are placed and where the chickens are allowed to forage, I think this issue can be easily resolved.

Sustainability Events

Over the next 6 weeks I will be taking part in 3 events which will highlight the bicycle powered water pump I have designed. More important is that the 3 events are interactive events that showcase work that is being done mostly by do it yourselfers, small businesses and activists that are trying to create a sustainable environment which of course will include community gardens and urban agriculture.

In order of occurrence the events are World Maker Faire, New Green City and Farm Hack NYC.

September 29 and 30 will be the third annual World Maker Faire at the Hall of Science in Queens, NY. It is sponsored by Make magazine which if you have not seen it is an interesting magazine for do it yourselfers and gadget makers of all kinds. There will be displays, presentations and lots of cool and interesting things to do and see.
My presentation of the bicycle powered water pump will be on Sunday September 30th at 4:30 pm.

On October 10th GrowNYC will be sponsoring the free 7th Annual New Green City Event from 10 am to 5 pm in Union Square Park in Manhattan. Many exhibitors, action oriented workshops given by the New School and others, a pop up community garden and of course the bicycle powered water pump and a bicycle powered blender will make this a fun and educational event.

Farm Hack is a farmer driven event to build tools for farm resiliency. The FarmHack NYC event is at multiple locations in Brooklyn and Queens on November 10th and 11th. The focus is Urban agriculture and once again I will be showing off my bicycle powered water pump and rainwater harvesting display. I am really interested in helping to design and develop other human powered machines that will help Urban farmers and community gardeners with tasks like watering and composting that could be done with bicycles or other low tech machines.

All of these events and the hard work and dedication that so many folks are putting into helping to make sure community gardens and urban agriculture practitioners have the tools they need to be sustainable just validates for me what I have been writing in this blog over the past 2 years. It gives me hope for the future that no matter what the support is from government or foundations that people are joining together in communities to make thing happen. Yes!