Valley Plentiful Community Garden

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Helping Gardens across the Globe

World Vision is a faith-based (Christian) humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. Norma found that World Vision offers opportunities to support the development of gardens in countries around the world. For example for 35 dollars, you can purchase an agricultural pack for a hungry family that includes seeds, tools and training so that they can grow healthy food. Check out the World Vision website or contact Norma at the next meeting for a group donation or for more information.

Planning for 2010

With the days getting shorter, and the wind getting colder - are we thinking about Spring planting already? Sure we are! Our first planning meeting for 2010 was held last week at the City of Pickering. Those in attendance learned from Carolyn about a number of opportunities to help out at the garden - and Garden Angels were born! Individual gardeners can sign up as caretakers (or should we say "worker bees") of one small aspect of the garden: from tending common beds, to making sure extra produce goes to the food bank, to planning events. There is plenty of opportunity to use your skills and talents. If you want to know more about the volunteer jobs available or have an idea for a new job - contact Carolyn. Check out the Garden Angel contact list below.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Harvest Festival Pictures

Check out some great pics of our Harvest Festival and some of its visitors at the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/becsbubble/HarvestFestival2009ValleyPlentifulCommunityGarden?authkey=Gv1sRgCMug6Or4sPzLtQE&feat=directlink#

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Phase II

If you haven't been over to Phase II yet to check out the amazing structures and strategies there, it's worth the short trip!

Community Garden Angels - 2010

The following gardeners have generously offered to be Garden Angels for the 2010 growing season. Contact Carolyn Kasperski about how to get involved.

Treasurer - Linda Butt #9

Membership Secretary - Joan Halket #23

Events (Spring, Summer, Fall) - Norma VanderVeer #13, VACANT

Publicity - Monica Dennis #29

Blog Maintenance - Chris Fortin #36

Compost - Carolyn Kasperski #17, VACANT

Food Bank - Tim Weber #55, Rebecca Fortin #36

Seeds for the Garden - Carolyn Kasperski #17, Monica Dennis #29

Water Barrels (Phase 1) - Tom Crowder #15, Mike Samarelli #43

Water Barrels (Phase 2) - VACANT

Phase 1 - Common Garden Plots

Strawberry Patch - Melanie Fowler-Dore #21

Rubarb Patch - Don Burnet #16

Asparagus - VACANT

Herb Bed - VACANT

Wild Edible Bed - Mike Samarelli #43

Phase 2 - Common Garden Plots

Herb Bed - VACANT

Asparagus - Tim Weber #55

Green Gardens

Community gardens are places where collections of local individuals work together with the earth. The community shares a space of land - either divided into individual plots or arranged as one large garden - where they plant gardens that can include flowers, vegetables and fruit.

We are living in a time of growing environmental crisis. The way things work in the world has taxed the earth to the point where it is getting harder for it to recover. Many animal species have gone extinct as a result, and the world climate has experienced a subtle but documentable rise in temperatures. We need new and better ways of doing things.

One function of society that has become damaging to the environment is the food system. Many foods are mass-produced thousands of miles away from the people who eat it. As a result, billions of cubic tons of damaging chemicals are expended just to ship food all over the place. The result is well-traveled food, that needs extra chemical preservatives to make it last while it spends weeks or even months in transit.

Moreover, Canadian communities have come to rely heavily on food produced in distant regions or even countries. Food is not as easily accessible or healthy as it should be for people in a particular area.

Community gardens seek to become a part of the solution to these problems. They reduce stress on the environment by providing access to food that is grown down the street, which doesn't need to pump so much gas into the air to travel to your table. The food is also free of preservatives and chemicals and is much healthier (and tastes better too). This is a way of getting food that is more sustainable for the environment.

Community gardens also help regions not to rely so heavily on imported foods. Food is more accessible to the people who live in an area. This concept is called Food Security, and is more environmentally and socially sustainable.

When the community gets together to tackle issues like these by growing their food in a community garden, great things happen. People who might not ordinarily get to know each other get a chance to become friends and partners - they get a chance to build their community. They also get to enjoy the benefits and stress-relief of being active outdoors. There is good reason why community gardens are becoming more common.