Grow Your Own

This Idea has been incorporated into the Sustainable Urban Farming Initiative. 

Idea Overview

Establish significant community gardens where neighbors can come together to learn, teach, and share resources to ultimately increase their personal growing capacity and opportunity for community building and engagement

Idea Round Up Concept Sheet

Who worked on idea?

Mindy Schwartz, Crystal Daughtry, Noir L Davis, Danielle Crumrine

What is the idea?

To establish significant community gardens where neighbors can come together to learn, teach, and share resources to ultimately increase their personal growing capacity and opportunity for community building and engagement

How would idea work?

• Use a large tract of vacant land to build garden
• Engage and empower (employ) local neighborhood coordinators to conduct asset based analysis of neighborhoods, including land assessment, knowledge banking, structure/resource ID, start and manage gardens
• Gardens are portals for sharing

Pluses:

• Addresses vacant land issues
• Builds and revitalizes community
• Resource and food sharing
• Teaches environmental stewardship, self-reliance, entrepreneurship
• Contributes to health
• Minimizes energy use (no Chilean fruit)
• Addresses waste water issues

Concerns:

• Land tenure (policy issues)
• Community engagement
• Soil contamination
• Utilities
• Storage, buildings on site
• Vandalism

Community opportunities:

• Engage colleges/universities
• Green builders
• Farm markets
• Community fund raisers (pumpkin patch, scarecrow contest, neighborhood harvest fest)
• Community revitalization