This summer, Green for the Greater Good partnered with the University of Delaware’s Living Lab Research Group and West Side Grows Together to create an opportunity for everyone who gardens at the Rodney Reservoir or is interested in gardening at the site to be involved in shaping the design of the future community garden space.
Participants also had the chance to think about and discuss community needs, aspirations and what is possible in the space in terms of programming and uses–especially the opportunity to expand access to eco-education, stewardship, gardening, and fresh vegetables.
More than 125 participants, including neighbors, gardeners, and a wide range of organizational partners and leaders, took part in the event series including three in-person workshops, a virtual session and a field trip to Baltimore. Community members were also invited to share input via a survey.
We are inspired by how many members of the community turned out to engage in this work! We thank our UD partners, Prof. Anna Wik from the Plant and Soil Sciences department, Prof. Nina David, from the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration, and Sakhi Phang, rising senior from the Landscape Architecture program, who once more supported our community to understand the options and think big by bringing landscape architecture design and planning tools and a collaborative process to designing the future garden space at Rodney Reservoir park. Sakhi’s work was funded by the Community Engagement Summer Scholar program at UD. Many thanks to this wonderful program!
The series was supported by a grant from the the Department of Natural Resources and Environment Control (DNREC) from their Community Environmental Project Fund (CEPF). Thank you also to our friends at St. Francis Hospital for hosting and participating in this process.
Session-by-Session Recap
Design Session I, July 2
At the first session participants celebrated the Rodney Reservoir Community Garden’s past achievements and then worked with site plans to capture ideas about what worked well and what could be improved.
Participants also looked at case studies of inspiration sites connected to the themes of programming, community resource hubs, sustainability, and outdoor education. Attendees gave feedback about what elements and uses might be a fit for the future Rodney Reservoir Community Garden.
(Case study posters on the themes of programming and community resource hubs. Click the image to view the gallery!)
Baltimore Field Trip, July 7
Our field trip to Baltimore was an amazing learning and community-building experience. The goals for the trip were to get inspiration for our own community design work and build connections between community gardens, food justice, and urban forestry projects across the region.
Our guide, McKay Jenkins, writer, UD professor, urban farmer and ecologist, took us to visit a series of inspiring projects he has been involved in.
The first stop was the Nepali American Cultural Center, a rural site outside of Baltimore that hosts worship services, language and cultural classes and gatherings for the local Nepali-American community. Programs at the center integrate agriculture and stewardship with spirituality and community. We explored the green infrastructure at the site and learned about how the community’s gardening practices celebrate cultural heritage and facilitate intergenerational relationships.
Next, we visited the Rock Rose Food Justice project, a volunteer-run initiative housed at a Baltimore City Farm site. The project consists of 20 crop rows, 8 outdoor raised beds, and a greenhouse and– astonishing to us–relies on a rain catchment system and water deliveries by the city. Crops raised are donated to local food kitchens, Soul Kitchen and Love and Cornbread, who create meals that are distributed to communities, including residents experiencing food insecurity.
We stopped off at Rock Rose Park to enjoy a delicious lunch prepared by Jamilah from Free Food For All Delaware. Members of the FFFA DE team on the trip shared insights about how their work providing beautiful meals to communities in Delaware on the mutual aid model also fosters collaboration with local and regional farms to connect communities to local food systems and fresh vegetables.
Finally, we visited Stillmeadow Community Fellowship, an urban church and Resilience Hub in Southwest Baltimore that hosts PeacePark, a hilly, forested 10-acre site on their property. We learned about how a flooding catastrophe in the neighborhood helped the congregation connect to the surrounding community and find new purpose for their resources. The Stillmeadow Community’s work is a case study in urban ecological restoration and reforestation that features strong partnerships with the University of Delaware, the USDA Forest Service and the City of Baltimore. With more than 2,800 trees planted onsite over the past three years, there was a lot to learn from collaborations at the site about planting and stewardship strategies as well as workforce development and youth training models we might be able to implement at our future Rodney Reservoir Park.
Thank you to our guide and partners from the University of Delaware - Professors McKay Jenkins and Anna Wik, and all the student interns who took part in the day. Immense thanks to our site hosts for their time and hospitality.
Design Session II, July 29
A major goal of this session was to think through designing the garden as an outdoor learning environment and for the purpose of expanding community access to nature, gardening and fresh produce.
Sakhi presented community garden concept diagrams based on priorities and challenges identified in the first session. The design concepts included an area for garden plots on the Clayton St. side (and largest portion) of the site, an outdoor learning environment space on the Rodney St. side, and a phase II space for community gathering and resources to support urban agriculture, food sharing and learning opportunities in between–where the communication tower currently sits. Community members identified several facilities to further connect the public to the Rodney Reservoir Park, including a multi-purpose outdoor kitchen/gathering area, a hoop house, citizen science-related resources and rain catchment, for this future zone.
Community experts Katie Pollock, a Master Teacher at the UD Lab School, and McKay Jenkins, professor at the University of Delaware shared their work and facilitated conversations about the opportunity for the future community garden to serve as an outdoor classroom and contribute to food justice and food sovereignty initiatives in our neighborhood.
Design Session III and IV, August 6 and 13
In the third in-person session, participants drilled down on materiality options for the site and refined recommendations for key features in the design through facilitated discussions on the topics of garden beds and circulation, water access, composting, community gathering spaces, an outdoor learning environment for youth and adult education, and operations. Facilitators scribed notes and the community recorded feedback on design concepts drawings as well as on personal plan documents.
We then gathered on Zoom to recap evolving design concepts participants developed over the series, the key priorities identified, and open questions. Watch the recorded session here.
The two concepts above represent options for configuring the site to reflect the set of priorities that were confirmed across the sessions. These priorities include:
As many plots as possible
Space for individual gardeners and for community production
Natural feel/minimal hardscape
Keep back of house installations out of public view
ADA accessibility
All-wood, Douglas Fir, 8’ x 10’ beds
Equitable access to municipal water & work toward rain catchment system
Effective composting system that scales to this garden/site
Space for youth and adult education–including citizen science (phase 1)
Space for urban ag, food-sharing, community gathering, education and stewardship including an outdoor community kitchen in the long term (phase 2) and a rustic sink in the short term (phase 1)
The Hinge team attended the final Zoom session with the intention of incorporating community priorities into their garden design. Representatives of Green for the Greater Good and West Side Grows Together have also had the opportunity to talk with Hinge and Parks and Recreation leadership to further discuss how these priorities might be translated into design and implementation. That conversation is ongoing, particularly given the state of transition that the City is in with the Carney administration setting up to take the lead in January.
Are you interested in participating in garden leadership initiatives including conversations around operations, by-laws and community gardening models? Please let us know by replying to this e-newsletter or emailing us at greenforthegreatergoodde@gmail.com!
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