2014 Garden Survey Results, FUN!

Local Families Plant Nutritious Winter Gardens

This community garden story is told from the perspective of Steph Logsdon, our Community Healthcorps Service Member.

On October 9th, members of the Thunderbird apartment complex in Ukiah learned about nutritious winter crops to plant in their gardens.

 When Highway 101 ran through Ukiah years ago, Thunderbird was a motel. Now, Thunderbird is a low-income family apartment complex in which most of the residents are Latino/Latina. Some are more recent immigrants from Mexico and most adults speak little English. The mothers of Thunderbird requested to learn more about nutritious crops they could plant to feed their children outside of the traditional Mexican crops they already knew so well. This summer their gardens produced bountiful crops of tomatoes, corn, tomatillos, peppers; gardening is no new thing for them.

I myself speak only the bare necessities of Spanish, but with the lingual help of Americorps FIRST 5 VISTA, Ligia Lopes, and my co-worker at the Gardens Project, Caitlin Morgan, we were able to have a successful workshop.

For our workshop, I prepared information sheets on planting and care for Broccoli, Cabbage and Collards in Spanish and brought 72 green plant starts to share.  After the greetings of “hola!” and “como estas?” we went ahead and started the workshop. First in my broken Spanish naming the vegetables with a poor accent, “Brócoli, Repollo, Quelites!” and saying other English things in which Ligia and Caitlin translating for me, we had the residents read from the Spanish hand out I gave them, learning together about how to care for the plants.

I thought maybe one person would volunteer to put a few plants in their garden to show everyone else and then we’d leave the starts for them to plant when they were ready. No, they all got it done right there. Everyone went straight to their garden plots and started digging and loosening the soil right away. Within 15 minutes, most all of the 72 plants that we brought were planted in their garden beds. Only those participants that didn’t live right there took plants home with them.

Their enthusiasm and readiness to get the veggies into the ground was inspiring. We barely had enough time to evenly divide up the plants between everyone there. One woman and her child rode the bus to come to our workshop, and there was one non-Hispanic man with his daughter who spoke English that had just moved into the complex that attended as well.  Thankfully I had one copy of the planting care still in English for him! All the children around spent their time coloring pictures of cabbage, pumpkins and other vegetables and were proud to show off their art.

I didn’t realize how much I could communicate with people by smiling, saying “Si!” and “Bueno!”… over and over and over again. I am overjoyed that the families at Thunderbird take such pride in growing their own food. Even though I couldn’t actually have a Spanish conversation with them (yet, I’m trying to learn), being there with them motivated me to try and learn more for next time.

More on our involvement with Mendocino County's kids and school gardens

For everyone who expressed an interest in the school gardens, here is some more information for you.

GENE, the garden-based nutrition education program, serves 32 schools from preschool to 12th grade in Mendocino County. The Gardens Project of North Coast Opportunities' Community Action Agency is proud to work with these school gardens, and together we reach more than 8,000 students and 1,000 families through gardening and nutrition events each year. This year federal funding for the program ended, putting these gardens at risk of closing.

The U.S. has an obesity epidemic, and we believe educating children about where their food comes from is more important now than ever. We hope to raise enough money to hire a garden coordinator for each school in order to keep the gardens alive and the students growing their own food.

Help fight childhood obesity and keep the gardens alive.

Creating Access to Local, Organic Food 

The Gardens Project is the coordinating agency for The Gardens Network, and facilitates the development of community-supported gardens throughout Mendocino County. 

Additionally, we support various projects including After School Nutrition Programs, Farm-to-Cafeteria, Food Stamp Outreach, and our Food Policy Council. The Gardens Project relieves hunger and inadequate nutrition in low-income neighborhoods, senior communities, schools, and youth enterprise projects by providing: 

• Education: We teach methods for growing organic food, as well as its nutritional, social, and economic benefits. We also offer leadership training for garden members and organizers.
• Nutrition/Physical Health. We do our best to bring a nutritious food supply to individuals, children, and families in a physically engaging, community-supported environment.
• Economic Development. We work to provide people with life-long, transferable, and self-sustaining skills in food production, cooking, surplus food sales, and reducing household food costs

We Ran the Ranch!

Sunshine, fresh air and community support was abundant Sunday, September 30th at the Run the Ranch 5k! Jaxon Keys Winery generously hosted this fundraiser for the Gardens Project to help support the continued building of community and school gardens. Over 50 people came out to run or walk the course that wound through rolling hills and beautiful vineyards of the winery. Participants were rewarded for their efforts with a farm fresh lunch. Kids had a great time making their own organic smoothies with our smoothie bike and adults enjoyed complementary wine tasting on the porch. Winners of each age category took home a bottle of  Jaxon Keys wine or spirits.

A big thanks to all who came out to support the Garden's Project!
 Thank you to all who made this event possible:

- Schat's Bakery

-Lovin' Mama Farm

-Jaxon Keys Winery

-North Coast Striders 

 -Our wonderful volunteers: Lauryn Ringwood, Lucy Shapiro, Jessica Ohland, Kristin Cutler, and Elizabeth Archer!

Why Community Garden?

 Community gardens have many benefits in addition to increased access to fresh and healthy produce. Studies have shown that crime reduction can be a result of community gardens! Check out this interesting article from the most recent Livable Places newsletter from the Local Government Commission:

Community Greening as a Crime Prevention Strategy: Some years ago, the City of Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods discovered that their community gardening program, called the P-Patch, was not only helping residents grow their own food and beautifying vacant lots, it was reducing crime. Today, some communities around the country are also observing this phenomenon as they turn to community gardens to increase food security and reduce obesity.

Finally researchers are documenting what others have been simply observing over the years. A before and after of community greening, undertaken by the University of Pennsylvania, recently found that greening public spaces reduced the number of assaults with a deadly weapon.

Over a period of 10 years the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has reclaimed 4,400 vacant lots in the City of Philadelphia - planting trees and gardens and surrounding the plots with 3-foot fences. University researchers measured the crime rates in the areas surrounding the renewed lots and found a significant number of reduced shootings. Charles Branas, the epidemiologist who released the study on the project late last year observed, "People just became more in touch with their neighbors. People felt more connected to one another." He found that, as a result, people in the neighborhood began to call the police for minor disturbances, something they hadn't done before.

Over a decade ago, University of Illinois researchers noted that simply providing trees could reduce violent behavior. They studied residents in a 28-building, public housing project in Chicago, comparing the observations of residents of buildings surrounded only by concrete and asphalt to those that offered trees. They found that outdoor spaces with trees were used significantly more often than identical spaces without trees; and residents of the buildings with trees experienced less violence. Researchers postulated that the stronger sense of community resulting from residents having a pleasant place to gather was responsible for the reduction in violent crime rates. The study (PDF) concluded that, "urban forests are not mere amenities - they are a basic part of the infrastructure of any city, as necessary as streets, sewers and electricity."

The relationship between trees and violent behavior was studied again, just this year, when University of Vermont professors looked at the crime reduction impacts of simply planting trees in and around the City of Baltimore. This time the researchers had access to sophisticated tools not readily available in the year 2000. University of Vermont researchers used GIS maps to overlay crime data with tree cover. They controlled for socioeconomic factors such as race and income levels, and the variables associated with tree cover - including ruralness, and population density.

The results of the study, published this June, revealed that for every 10 percent increase in trees there was a 12 percent decrease in crime.  Austin Troy, the lead author, noted that a well-intended bunch of trees sends a warning to would-be robbers that stoop-sitters and dog-walkers are watching. "If I was a criminal, that's probably not where I'd want to be" he notes. 

To view the rest of the newsletter or to check out the Local Government Commission website visit www.lgc.org