free digger
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Do you need a BA to be a GreenThumb gardener?
I’ve joined the Granite Street Community Garden, which is just about a couple of blocks away, on the same block as the Biko Center. The garden had been promised a load of top soil by the local GreenThumb contact. It’s a very active, sociable garden—much more so than a local Trust for Public Land garden called the Contented Heart Garden, which received a load of top soil months ago, even though it appears to me that only one person ever really works in it. Of course, being a Trust garden, it has significant organizational support—much more than any Parks Department garden.
I emailed GreenThumb to find out what’s up. Here’s the response I got from Susan Fields, the deputy director:
Hi Mark
Because we serve 600+ community and school gardens with currently 2 field staff we switched in early 2005 to a more sustainable model. The model is sustainable both for GreenThumb to provide services in a fair, equitable and predictable manner—so that garden groups may count on us to provide services in a way that allows them to plan for both today and tomorrow. One of the key features of this model has been to elevate our field staff from being delivery-on-demand people - who spent a lot of time + gas + air pollution delivering bits of supplies here & there while trying to conduct property management, site visits and provide technical assistance to groups in need.
We have for the last 2 years successfully provided materials to a larger group of gardens then ever before, while offering an annual average of 50+workshops, attended by 1500+ people --we can only do this because we now offer services in a more efficient, effective way. Materials/resources are connected to centralized community education workshops. Gardeners must attend a short 30 -45 minute workshop and afterwards they receive a free supply for their garden. It is a really nifty way to centralize resources distribution and make it available to everyone --- while at the same time enhancing the knowledge level of our gardens on various topics.
We encourage garden groups to send as many different people as possible from their group to workshops - to help strengthen the garden network.
I apologize for any confusion that may have occurred between our staff and the garden group. If the garden group attended a workshop and our registered with GT they will get soil. If they weren’t able to attend any of the 6 workshops since November—then they can plan ahead to attend any of the 3 workshops that will be offered again in a few months to get a load of soil in the fall.
Whew! I emailed her back, thanking her for the thoughtful reply. Then when the new course catalog came out (OK, they call it their Program Guide), I searched through it to find the right workshop to quality for soil delivery. Not being able to figure it out, I wrote Susan Fields again. Here’s her reply:
Hi Mark
Soil/compost/cleanfill deliveries are accessed through workshops offered in the fall and late winter. Fall workshops allow for ordering a fall or spring delivery. Late winter workshops allow for ordering a spring delivery. Look for late September/ Early October workshops in the GT Fall Program Guide to access soil/compost/cleanfill.
Susan
Turns out Juniper, who has a doctorate in Social Work, had independently searched through the same catalog, and had the same confusion as me. Is this just another example of Parks Department undersupporting community gardens, and poorer communities generally? They have certainly set up a procedure that benefit those who know how to work the system and have advocacy skills. And know their way around a course catalog. . .
The problem as a whole, of course, is that Parks Department is underfunding its community gardening program. In some cases, it evens diverts money earmarked for community gardens to other programs. I’ll have a story about that later. But that’s not an excuse for setting up rigid procedures that functionally discriminate on the basis of class and education.