Many of you sent seeds for our children to plant in our guerrilla garden on a vacant lot. Thought you might be interested to learn what has happened in the last couple of years.
inanda
Guerrilla garden update
So much has happened. (A very long post).
Amongst other things, our city block attacted the attention of the UW dept. of Urban studies. This was because flowers and veggies started appearing in front gardens. Grass started being turned into gardens - even in front of apartment buildings. Rooming Houses started being tided up by the tenants themselves. Weeds, gone, flowers/veggies appearing. Broken windows fixed. 2 boarded up ex drug houses FINALLY demolished (after a couple of scary fires). Yippee, space for 2 more guerrilla gardens was my first thought - now a reality.
Dept. of Urban studies dug around and found that suddenly, police calls to this block had gone down 88% as well. UW wanted to find out why. Why had vandalism/fire calls/overdose calls/stolen vehicles etc gone down here, far far more than in the rest of the inner city.
After what I am sure was a very expensive study, a report was published about the extraordinary change started by a group of determined people living on our block. We closed the street for the book launch, with a BBQ, street fair and music from a band that lives on the street.
Sadly that same week, we were told to move our 5 year old beautiful guerrilla garden. The management co. that was responsible for the GG lot, decided there was an insurance problem. Luckily - two demolished houses........ So, we now LEGALLY garden on these two lots.
After losing our GG, decided I had to find some more permanent gardening area for the kids - and the community. Found a hydro lot with only a small pumping box in one corner. Hydro this spring finally has allowed us to garden on it, so after jumping through so many hoops and much red tape we have a permanent children's garden.
Each child has their own little plot where they plant whatever they want.
The rest of the lot is strawberries, a pizza garden, a 3 sisters area (corn, beans & squash) and a 4 points garden. (north/south/east/west)
planted with sweet grass, nettles, sage (for smudging) Culver root, liatris, and other aboriginal & prairie plant material. An elder came and blessed the garden after one of the children requested this. This entire garden was designed and planned by the kids.
It is now the beginning of August with very few weeds. The children come and check out their plots and weed and harvest the plots of kids who (presumably) have either moved out of the area or gone to their reserve for the summer.
Most of the kids go to the local elementary school. In the spring the grade 5 teacher dropped byto see what her kids were talking about. Now she wants to have a garden for her class next year. Space, need more space.
Aha. The library. One of the last two original remaining Carnegie libraries in the city. A huge area of sunny grass where I've been trying to get the library board to allow me to have a community garden for years. Went over the Library Board collective heads, direct to the city via our local (very activist) city councillor. Eureka.... done. The library board does what the city tells them to do. As long as there is no cost to the library.............
So here we will have the new grade 5 garden with remainder of space for the local community gardeners.
The publicity generated by the UW study and the children's garden has had a couple of other schools contact me. Now have started at one school 35 large raised beds with veggies and edible flowers.
The local green team spends 2 hours daily watering/weeding etc in this garden.
Lots of kids look after ' their' garden. These kids are very different to the kids in my area. These are mainly new immigrant boys and girls of many different nationalities. So many diet does and dont that now my snacks are mainly fruit and nuts. Many of these kids have planted seeds from their own countries. Many veggies I've never heard of . Lots of the parents come to this garden. The children translate for them. These parents are thrilled to have fresh veggies that their kids are growing. It is really wonderful to see the kids showing their parents why tomatoes have to be pruned, how to look after pumpkin plants, (names on pumpkins a great hit) Parents are showing their kids how to garden too.
On top of this, have been giving workshops on - you name it. Rain barrels/composting/building composters/square foot gardening/container gardening (garbage bags on balconies for veggies) not to mention iris workshops to various hort societies.
Have never been so busy in my life. The GG gardens are being looked after by another guerrilla gardener. This because the children gardens take up most of my time.
I often think of the seeds that so many DGers sent, the first year we started the GG. We didn't have a penny to buy seeds and you sent so many. It made a huge difference. Now the school board supplies seeds, whatever we ask for, as well as tools.
A group called Bridging the Gap has given us hand tools and is giving us trees for fall planting. The children decided all edibles so different berries, apples, nuts, cherries, choke cherries for the childrens garden and grape vines for the library fence.
inanda aka Ginny
Wonderful Ginny, just an amazing project and an enormous amount of work you've put in to it.
Linda
Ginny
It has brought tears to my eyes to hear of how your dreams have blossomed.
I hope you can smell the sweet smell of success that your garening has grown for others.
What a wonderful accomplishment!
Congratulations
Ann
What more can one say but .... awesome!!! You are tireless and an inspiration.
Sandy
Not really. Just want to basicly keep kids out of gangs/drugs/theft/vandalism. My answer is to get them interested in something - ANYTHING -something local that will keep them busy, give them ownership of something . You have to catch them young, very young. Remember these are inner city kids, single parents or foster kids, children's aid kids, all different nationalities and backgrounds. My skills are gardening and reading so this is what I do.
When I moved here it was a whole new world. Have seen kids on streets in third world countries but never here in north america. Didn't really intend to have all this happen, it just morphed. One thing led to another. Weedy vacant lots, grow food and perennials. I could go on and on.
If any of you live downtown with an ugly whatever near you, start some guerrilla gardening there. Kids and people will come.
inanda
That's wonderful!
Giving the kids a sense of accomplishment and something to eat at the same time, what a great thing.
I did something similar but on a much smaller scale when my kids were little and we lived in "housing" and the worst part was that after some of the kids worked all summer hauling water and weeding, their parents wouldn't let them eat anything from the garden, because a cat or dog might have peed on it.
These were all inner city people who had never been out of the city, and obviously thought the food in their grocery stores grew in the cans or something - or maybe they just had no idea about what kind of critters there were in the country that could have peed on the carrot tops.
I was more than astonished at the ignorance, and felt *so* badly for the kids whose parents took that attitude. They had been so proud of their small gardens.
Inanda, what you are doing is so important. I hope you realise just how much you are giving here. Way to go, girl !!
Ginny - when we met last year @ the RU in Calgary, you talked to me about your garden, and of course I know Just The Area you mean (being from Winnipeg myself), so I applauded your tenacity then. Now, I applaud it even more, as 'the powers that be" are listening to you and giving you what you need. It's in God's hands, and he's making them understand, through you. Bless you for your ideas, your caring, and your tenacity. All has come to fruitian. You're a wonderful motivator!
I'd love to see pictures of the kids working in the gardens, and them holding the fruits of their labours. Do you have any, and are they posted in the libraries, community papers, etc??
btw - this is a pic of a Bear Shield. The Bear is for your tenacity, and the Shield is to help you shield the children, with their new knowledge of gardening, from the ills of the world that surround them.
~Susan~
