Rose Park Community Gardens
Brainstorm
I’ve only had one short phone conversation with Scott Steenblik, the contact for the Rose Park Community Council, about the current and future setup of Rose Park Community Gardens so this might seem premature and presumptuous but I can’t stop my brain from coming up with crazy ideas, and I can hardly resist pushing forward to see if they’re possible. So for this post, I’m going to detail my ideas for how to move forward with this community gardening organization and what I’ve found out so far. Keep in mind: no matter how certain I seem in articulating these ideas here, I’m not wedded to any of them since I realize this needs to be a collective decision; all of this will depend on how much interest and support we find; most of these ideas would only be viable after we grow large enough; and I’m brainstorming, so I can’t be held responsible for how bad an idea might actually be.
Claire Uno, the director of Wasatch Community Gardens, pointed me toward this fantastic document 
on how to start a community garden. It is by far the best document of its kind that I’ve seen and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a comprehensive guide to starting a community garden.
We’ll need to find a bunch of folks interested in formalizing the organization, setup a meeting, work out our ideas for the future, form a planning committee, set goals to meet before the next meeting, and schedule the next meeting.
The WCG document has some suggestions on who should be in the committee and it’s in line with what I was thinking. There is a Baptist church on 1000 North, closer to my end of Rose Park, that has a nice little plot of empty land next to the building. And it’s right across the street from Rose Park Elementary, so I was already thinking of getting someone from each of those organizations involved. Scott’s a member of the community council so we’ve got that covered. And WCG suggests a Master Gardener from the Salt Lake County Extension. Assuming we can get each of these folks involved, and counting me, that would make five of us, so we’d need about five more. I’d like to get some local business people involved, and a politician, maybe someone from the City Council. And maybe someone from the library or Tree Utah since Day Riverside Library has the Eco Garden ( managed by Tree Utah ) on site.
Then we’re going to need to divide into subcommittees: a steering committee, a fundraising committee, and a community outreach committee.
I like the current setup they’ve got right now. Basically, if you show up and volunteer, you can take home fresh veggies at the end of your shift. I’ll refer to this as the Collective Parcel. If we do expand, I would like to keep the Collective Parcel just as it is, though I’d like to institute a percentage of the yield going to the local Food Bank. The first parcel we arrange for expansion, if we decide to go that route now or eventually, should either be for rented plots only or a mixed collective plot and rented plots. Either way, let’s call this the Renters Parcel. I’m open to putting in a collective plot on the Renters Parcel so we can have it as the Children’s Garden. And if we do decide to expand, we’re going to have to do a little survey of vacant lots in the area. The parcel I was interested in at 900 North 900 West might be developed now and aside from that it may be contaminated with petroleum waste so we’ll need some more options.
For the rented plots, I’d like to incorporate a year-end discount upon renewal for renters who have contributed a percentage of their yield to the Food Bank donation, though I’m imagining a rather problematic tracking system so I’m not too sure. I want to encourage donation but it would be difficult if the tracking system is too complicated and unreliable. I’d also have to check into the numbers for operational costs to know if this would still work if a significant number of members donate large amounts.
I’d like to get some long term security for the Renters Parcel, just so we can always count on that as a revenue stream. If that can’t be arranged for the moment, we can always try to go with a shorter lease and set up a temporary garden with the same kind of rental arrangement. I prefer to assume we get the long term space first and the temporary space later. Mainly because by that point, I’d like to explore more innovative approaches to community gardening to contribute more services to the community, more to food security, and to create entrepreneurial opportunities for members who are interested.
As a radical adjunct to expansion, I would love to be able to offer soil remediation services to petroleum contaminated vacant lots in exchange for options on future leasing. Now, I know nothing about soil remediation but I saw this TED talk by Paul Stamets from 2008 and about half way through the video, he talks about the dramatic success of using mycelium to remediate soil contaminated with petroleum waste. More information can be found here. I also have no idea about regulations surrounding this kind of work. I’m sure there’s plenty but I have yet to look into it. It would be awesome if this method really works and I think it would be a great way to contribute lasting value to the entire community, also innovative enough to really excite donors. Then again, the others on the committee might think I’m nuts and kick me out. But hopefully in three to five years, my crazy ideas might seem more viable.
For community outreach and for our compost needs, we can offer to take any grass clippings or dead leaves off residents’ hands, if we don’t already. Maybe work with Rose Park restaurants (actually it might be singular) to take their compostable waste, though I’d have to think about the logistics of that a little more. It would be nice if we could offer free lawn care services to disabled and senior residents, but here, too, the logistics might be pretty intimidating if I had a clearer picture of potential need, demand, and volunteer support. In a similar vein, I’d also like to offer free gardening assistance to any Rose Park resident, though the assistance would likely depend on a waiting list, so, again, not too sure. I’m really hoping that in three to five years, we can drum up a lot of new support.
I would definitely want to have educational workshops. And not just on gardening. Cooking also comes to mind. Food preservation and storage, too. And despite being associated with botany, no gardening organizations I’ve encountered so far in Salt Lake know much about fungi, so aside from potentially using it for remediation, I’d like to incorporate fungi into our gardens and teach courses on it, too.
One thing about workshops: I don’t like them. I’ve seen all kinds of workshops in my day and I’ve found them all lacking. They’re either too short so the presentation is too broad or too breezy, or they’re too long so the presentation is overwhelming. Worst of all, there is no follow up, which I believe is critical to good educating. So I’d actually like to try ongoing classes on a few topics that have broad interest, like mushrooms, organic gardening, drip irrigation, permaculture and xeriscaping, and whatever else the community requests; something like a class every other week, or once a month.
I’d like to stay active in the winter months with Thanksgiving and Christmas services for the poor or the downtown shelter, that sort of thing. And back to the expansion aspirations as it relates to staying active year round, I really want a greenhouse.
Okay, that’s about all I’ve got for the general direction and community outreach. The last thing is fundraising.
This is where the imperative to form a 501(c)(3) comes in. I’d like to get Whole Foods and IHC as sponsors but they both only give to 501(c)(3)s. I was also thinking of Smith’s ( Kroger’s ) but I couldn’t find anything on their site other than the community programs they currently participate in, which is why I went looking at Whole Foods. There’s a Smith’s in the neighborhood so they definitely would be more appropriate but what can you do?
By integrating these various programs, I think we could have a good chance at a Community Food Projects Competitive Grant. If we can emphasize the value of workshops on organic gardening, urban ecology, permaculture, and the like, we could have a chance at an EPA grant. And, of course, there’s the CDBG.
Now for the entrepreneurial opportunities. This might sound a little strange, too. And I wish I knew someone who could really give me a critical take on the idea. I’d like to develop a Rose Park Community Gardens retail brand. Members would be able to contribute a portion of their yield into the collective pot of produce, probably specific kinds in order to get large enough quantities. We package them up under the Rose Park Community Gardens label, and distribute them through outlets like Whole Foods and the farmers market. Obviously this would have to be a much larger operation at this point, but at the same time the outlets would hopefully understand and accept our limitations, though I’d prefer to have the capacity to meet demand. If we were really hopping, I’d even want to sell directly to a couple of local restaurants. The proceeds would first be split down the middle with RPCG getting half. The other half would be dividing among contributing members. And “half” in this scenario actually stands for whatever reasonable split is decided upon in committee.
I definitely would want to limit this to whole foods at first. I kinda like the idea of allowing members to contribute prepared foods, preferrably with food from the gardens as a primary ingredient, but that might be too much of a regulatory nightmare for a small ( no matter how large we get ) nonprofit. Or the organization can centralize the preparations and then treat it just like whole foods and split revenue according to contributions. I’m thinking if we can produce huge surpluses of compost, we could package it and sell that, too.
One final thing: I’d like to look into some kind of community garden co-op network sort of thing ( tall enough hedge for you? ) so all the community garden organizations can pool purchases and share resources ( though not funds ), but I have no idea how the other community gardens in the valley would respond.
Okay, that’s a good overview of most of my crazy ideas for this thing, and I haven’t even touched on my ideas for social networking and the internet. It should be obvious that I am overly ambitious. I realize this. But I’ve always figured myself to be an idea guy. I can work the implementation end well enough but, really, anybody can do that. Not everybody can come up with streams of crazy ideas, or at least aren’t willing to make an ass of themselves suggesting them, so I always try to provide that fertilizer, so to speak. I’m not afraid of going big, either. It’s ultimatly what I want. I want to have a community garden that can really make a broad impact on our community as a whole.
On the other hand, we may end up starting small. We still happen to have plenty of space right now, and we could use a new fence, after all.