The Garland Community Garden Is Worth Your Support Some Strawberries from the Garland Community Garden in 2014: We need your support for our garden so we can grow many more of these in 2015. Please contribute today with your time and money. Benefits for You and Our Community Community gardens have been shown to increase property values in the immediate vicinity where they are located. In Milwaukee, properties within 250 feet of gardens experienced an increase of $24.77 with every foot and the average garden was estimated to add approximately $9,000 a year to the city tax revenue. Developing and maintaining garden space is less expensive than parkland area, in part because gardens require little land and 80% of their cost is labor. Community gardens provide a place to retreat from the noise and commotion of urban environments and have been shown to attract small businesses looking to relocate. Community gardens provide employment, education and entrepreneurship opportunities for a wide variety of people including students, recent immigrants and homeless people. Gardening is considered to be a moderate to heavy intensity physical activity and has been linked to significant beneficial changes in cholesterol, HDL cholesterol and systolic blood pressure. Reduces soil erosion and runoff, which lessens flooding and saves the city money.
The Garland Community Garden can provide wonderful educational opportunities for our children and youth. Community gardens can serve as an outdoor classroom where youth can learn valuable skills involving application of practical math, communication, responsibility and cooperation. With your volunteer support, here are some potential leadership opportunities and related programs: Join together with a group of students to determine the amount of supplemental water that will be required on a month-to-month basis to sustain the plants in all the beds in the Garland Community Garden. Join together with a group of students to design rainwater catchment systems to meet some of the water needs for the garden. Join together with other volunteers to create a special place in the garden for children perhaps an edible Garden of Eatin created in part by the children themselves Loving Garland Green member, James Roney talks with a pupil from Lister Elementary about organic pest control.
OUR COMMUNITY AND OUR GARDEN Garland Texas is a majority minority working class community. We have a proud history of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps since day one. Garland Power and Light is the City of Garland's locally owned and controlled electric utility. It was formed by a group of Garland citizens who bought a generator and set up a city utility. Then a $100,000 bond was voted in the early 1920s to finance a 2,300-foot well and an overhead storage tank so homes and businesses could have running water. We have a long proud history of our citizens pulling together to accomplish the impossible and doing it. Furthermore, to this day, we are one of the few cities in the USA who do it with a balanced budget for our citywide operations. We are not mired deeply in debt like many municipalities our size--thanks in great part to our City Manager, Bill Dollar, members of our City Council and our Mayor Douglas Athas as well as our other city leaders who have gone before them. We are a city who truly honor and celebrate the old-time American values on which our country was founded. If you don't believe me, attend our fabulous Fourth of July--one of the greatest family events in Texas, if not the USA. If you need further proof of how much we value labor and the working class, then attend our Labor Day Parade and celebration, our second largest city celebration of the year. In fact, as far as I know, Garland is the only city in the DFW area who even have a Labor Day Parade. The Garland Labor Day Parade is the largest Labor Day Parade West of the Mississippi. AND NOW WE HAVE OUR OWN COMMUNITY GARDEN ON CITY-OWNED PROPERTY AT 4022 NAAMAN SCHOOL ROAD Like most of our other city-sanctioned activities, and in keeping with other local ventures in our city, the Garland Community Garden is an experiment unlike any other community garden. Most community gardens are set up so that individuals wanting to garden there pay $40 to $70 a year for a garden plot. These gardens usually have a fence around them with a padlock to keep people out. The Garland Community Garden is truly a community garden that is open to the community. It has no fence and citizens are welcome to roam the area 24/7 from dawn to dusk. Residents who want to garden, or who want to come down to the garden to pull a few weeds or rake, or simply walk around the peaceful setting are not charged any money to do so. (If you want a garden plot, you will have to contact Loving Garland Green as they are the stewards of this property.) We don't even mind if you nibble a few strawberries in season while you are down there. Loving Garland Green, a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization pays the water bill and promotes the garden and its activities on its website at http://lovinggarlandgreen.org. Unlike most organizations, Loving Garland Green does not charge a membership fee to join, thus anyone with the desire to garden together with others can come on in.
THE MISSION OF THE GARLAND COMMUNITY GARDEN AND LOVING GARLAND GREEN IS THE SAME: TO ENCOURAGE GARLAND CITIZENS TO GROW AT LEAST SOME EDIBLES IN THEIR YARDS, ON THEIR PATIOS, OR DOWN AT THE GARDEN And in these efforts, nothing succeeds like success. Loving Garland Green members don't just talk about growing edibles, we grow them and we also report on our successes and failures. Members of Loving Garland Green are well on the road to discovering what grows well in our area. You can read about many of these discoveries right on our website at Loving Garland Green Org. Members of Loving Garland Green are not experts or trained horticulturists. We are average Garland citizens who believe in the value of growing some of the food that we eat--to sustain own health as well as that of our local economy. We are all learning as we go and many of us are keeping records and reporting back to the organization and our community. Garland is fast on its way to becoming the educational center for urban farming in Dallas County. We have the Garland Community Garden in the northern part of our city and soon the Master Gardeners of Dallas County will be breaking ground in the southern area of our municipality. With these two large public edible gardens, Garland may soon become the urban farming center of the DFW area.
OUR FUTURE PLANS AND HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT US We are increasing by one-third the number of garden beds down at the garden over December and January. We need 1) rabbit manure and 2) vegetable scraps (not from cooked veggies but from the fresh produce in your refrigerator that may have gone bad before you had a chance to eat it). Please bring your veggie scraps down to the garden and leave beside the compost containers. Dump it right into the containers if there is room; otherwise dump it beside the containers on the ground. Someone will be down daily to move it into the beds. This material is needed to speed up the composting process in the leaf and cardboard beds. These beds are now being covered with 6 mil black plastic sheeting to hold the heat in and speed up the decomposition process. By the middle of March, with the addition of a little topsoil, we will be ready to plant. Here is a wish list of three kinds of things we need: (Call 972--571-4497 if you need for us to pick anything up.) 1. Rabbit Manure 2. Veggie scraps. 3. Money - Checks made payable to "Loving Garland Green" and sent to Loving Garland Green, 216 East Kingsbridge Drive, Garland, Texas 75040. Loving Garland Green is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization and donations are tax deductible according to state and federal law. Here are just a few of the ways that we would put your money to use: 1) Installing two self-standing rain barrels with catchment systems to supply water for the two existing square foot garden plots in the area. 2) Building 330-gallon rainwater catchment and reservoir systems from IBC totes to supplement water needs for the winding garden. 3) To purchase seeds, transplants and more food-producing perennials for the garden including fruit trees to begin the establishment of a woodland garden. 4) Building a spiral herb garden 5) To purchase materials to build the structure for a Loofah tunnel. 6) To purchase materials to build the structure for a Hops garden
ANOTHER URBAN GARDEN Another Urban Garden is one of our outreach programs to the community that was created to support our mission to increase the number of urban gardens in our community. Loving Garland Green members go out to homes of families who may have never gardened before, but who want to try it. We install a square foot garden and assist them in planting it. To date we have installed six such gardens in Garland. We need funds and volunteers in order to continue this valuable program. The Kahl family posed for a photo following the installation of their 16 square foot garden. The two pots to the side feature asparagus and a potato tower donated to the family garden by Loving Garland Green. The sign on the front of the box identifies the square foot garden as belonging to the Kahls, tells a little bit about the "Another Urban Garden Program", and provides a map of what is and what will be planted in each of the squares. The wooden trellises were part of the installation. They are screwed into the frame of the raised bed. Later they will provide support for cucumber, squash and zucchini.
The Garland Community Garden and Loving Garland Green have the support of Mayor Douglas Athas and other City leaders such as our City Manager, Bill Dollar Following the installation of a square foot garden by Loving Garland Green members and the Kahl family of Garland, Mayor Athas presented them with a certificate authenticating their family as official Garland Urban Farmers.
Children love to garden! Please assist Loving Garland Green in bringing more gardens to their homes in 2015! Contribute your time and money to Another Urban Garden.
Another Installation of Another Urban Garden Join us in increasing the number of urban gardens in Garland and thereby increasing the prosperity of our local economy and the health of our citizens. Crystal Carel of Garland, Texas had a four-foot by eight-foot square foot garden installed in her backyard in 2014 by members Charlie Bevilacqua and Liz Berry. In the photo above, Crystal is carefully planting some carrot seeds.