Garden Leaders Celebrate a Successful First Year!

Year one of the Garden Leadership Training program concluded last Wednesday with a celebration of photos, plans for the future and of course, cake!

20 Garden leaders from Ukiah and Anderson Valley spent the last ten months strengthening community, building leadership skills and sharing hopes, triumphs, tips, challenges and delicious meals with each other.

The goal of this three year program is to train community gardeners to share, organize, lead, and continue to build the movement for expanding and sustaining spaces for community and school gardens.

The group met every six weeks at the NCO conference room and each meeting focused on a different theme such as effective leadership, garden advocacy, market opportunities and growing community. Meetings were facilitated by Gardens Project coordinator Miles Gordon and other Gardens Project staff.

The group's final venture of the year was a PhotoVoice project in which Garden Leaders documented their experiences by taking photos of their community members at work in the gardens.  These photos, with their interpretations, are being compiled into a traveling exhibit so look for them around town soon!

Now that year one has been brought to a close, Garden Leaders from Ukiah and Anderson Valley have chosen to continue meeting as a Garden Leadership Council next year without facilitation by the Gardens Project. The Gardens Project will be moving onto year two of this three year program by starting  the same training cycle with gardeners from Willits, Laytonville and Covelo this January. The following year will be with gardeners on the coast from Point Arena to Fort Bragg.