One of the most well-kept secrets in the mountains of North Carolina is The Village Green Conservancy, Inc., a 501C3 purlieu in Cashiers, an unincorporated village. We spend four months in Cashiers every summer and fall, and I can’t wait to arrive…
Bee and butterfly populations are in decline in Connecticut. To address this problem, to lure them in, and to increase their numbers, the Millbrook Garden Club created a pollinator garden at the Sharon Audubon Center. At this site, the garden club…
Located in the neighborhood of Central Tacoma, Washington, Franklin Park serves its community well—there are numerous opportunities for recreation for children and adults, including a community garden. It has served its purpose for the elementary…
More than 75 residents, neighbors, and friends gathered at City Hall in Bowie, Maryland in December of 2016 to celebrate the community’s seven year journey to become a Certified Community Wildlife Habitat under the National Wildlife Federation’s…
The Ancestral Roots Community Garden is in Chattanooga’s Menlo Park Neighborhood. The garden plantings and design are inspired by traditional Southern African American yards and home gardens. Greens, beans, okra, muscadine, herbs, corn, watermelons…
The urban campus of American University in Washington, DC is known for its green spaces. Its grounds serve as an arboretum, caring for nearly 400 different species and varieties of woody plants. During this Spring’s Campus Beautification Day, a new…
I’ve sometimes wondered about the importance of space in one’s life. For me, my home filled with family photos, colorful art works, plants, and books is the place that provides comfort and peace and is the space I can always count on. Bridge Gardens,…
I am a gardener at a community P-Patch garden in Seattle, Washington. I also volunteer/write for the P-Patch Post, which is a free bi-yearly newspaper that is mailed to each gardener in the P-Patch program. I wrote the below article, which appeared…
This little gem is located in Pasadena, California originally designed in the mid 1930s. The garden has recently been restored, remaining true to its original pre-war design. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. The garden is well…
A wet Saturday morning dawned for the May “Saturdays in the Garden” lecture recently. “The Garden” in the lecture title is Loudoun’s Extension Master Gardener Demonstration Garden at Ida Lee Park and Recreation Center. In this space, our volunteer…
During the fall and winter of 2012 and 2013, Ryan W. put together a proposal to build an urban farm, which later became North Brooklyn Farms. He presented it at a Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning meeting, where two neighbors…
El Jardin del Paraiso, Inc. is a public park, operated by community members and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation. El Jardin del Paraiso is available for community events and activities. The goals of El Jardin del Paraiso, Inc. are to promote…
My name is Maryanne Kuzniar. My second community garden experience began in 2009 in and continues to this day at La Guardia Corner Gardens. I came back to New York City in 2009, and having had a large garden in Italy, I was a little bit worried that…
My name is Maryanne Kuzniar. I was born and raised in the suburbs of New Jersey, and that's when I started gardening—helping out in the backyard with our vegetable garden and pruning flowers and things. And then, I traveled around a lot of in my…
Poppa & Momma Jones' Historic Community Garden is a struggling garden with strong ties to an interesting past. Back around the summer of 2013, I walked past an elderly couple gathering vegetables from various garden beds. I had recently returned…
My name is Lori Harris, and I’m a community gardener. I'm quite sure I wouldn't have been a gardener if it wasn't for my father. I mean I like to grow plants in the house or whatever. But, I really took an interest in watching him be interested in…
Haja: My name is Haja Worley. I am the husband of Cindy Nibbelink Worley. I’m from Patterson, New Jersey by way of North Carolina. Growing up, my parents had a garden in the backyard. I'm sure the garden was not as big as it seemed to be when I was…
The Garden Path ~ Green, Growing, and Blooming Project emerged as a tangible remembered connection and, consequently, a pathway to engagement following my mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, thereby, enlarging her narrowing view of her world. She had…
Citizens Committee for New York City’s mission is simple: to help New Yorkers – especially those in low-income areas – come together and improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Residents are uniquely situated to define and act on the…
Considered the oldest community garden in New York, Liz Christy Community Garden was established in 1973. In late 1973 and early 1974, the community activist group the Green Guerillas, among them an energetic member named Liz Christy, cleared the lot…
The Taneyhills Library Garden was a bare landscape. With a grant from the Master Gardeners of the Ozarks and donations from supporters of the library, new gardens were established. One of the Master Gardeners and a Library board member helped…
Omar B., a zone gardener with the New York Restoration Project (NYRP), shares entries from the journal he keeps about his work with the environmental non-profit founded by Bette Midler in 1995 to preserve and transform public green spaces in New York…
Have you ever judged a neighborhood by its trees? I have. Without even realizing it, I've felt happy walking down an alley of green trees in the summer, in the filtered light of their giant canopies. I've also felt that a block is gloomy or deserted…
A mosaic path winds its way through the Bassett Street Park, past the bushes on the edges and the donated sculpture memorial in the lot’s center. The summer the path was made, every volunteer from the neighborhood designed a square. They used…
Jody K. is quick to say she’s not a leader. “I’m more of a really good follower,” she protests. But while Jody may not have captained the initial push to transform the vacant lot at 93 Shepard Street into a Greenspace, she has been the site’s most…
It started because of a shared problem: the drug activity and prostitution in the abandoned double lot on Saltonstall and Lloyd. Adeli D. lived next door at the time, and remembers having to yell at the dealers who wandered through her driveway past…
On an early Monday autumn morning, with leaves changing colors and dropping across the city of New Haven, I found myself driving through The Hill neighborhood in the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) delivery truck, the bed full of 300-pound trees…
