The Beginning, Oh Joy!

5,000 sq ft of endless possibilities.

There is definitely something to be said for folks that delve into the unknown, or rather, that allow oneself to relearn what they knew before. We are super excited to embark upon this adventure in creating a community garden. All things are in alignment and they are steadily getting done. We wanted to begin a blog of our journey for several reasons: to allow those that want to donate gardening supplies or money, including individuals and businesses, to be able to see exactly what we are doing with Unity Urban Garden. We also decided to blog for others of like mind with any sort of interest in what we are doing to allow them to check us out, make comments, give advice, etc.

Below is an updated list of all our meetings, and we will be posting them daily or at least, once a week:

2009
Saturday, March 28, 6-8 p.m.
Thursday, March 5, 6:30-7:15 p.m.

Thursday, March 12, 6:30-7:30 p.m., two of us were able to attend a class entitled, Transforming Urban Spaces with Ben Nathanson as the teacher. The class was very inspiring and was mainly about transforming alleys in urban settings into gardens, while still allowing the space to be available to the community.

Saturday, March 21, 4-7:30 p.m., we met with Roy Skeen, who has several community gardens in the Baltimore area, and he surveyed the plot and gave much needed and appreciated feedback about design and others things we needed to do. We enjoyed having him and loved the information he shared with us! After meeting him, we had a general meeting.

Wednesday, March 25, 7:30-8:45 p.m., two of us were able to attend the Moravia Community Association Meeting where we introduced ourselves, made our intentions clear about beginning the garden, and made contact with people in the neighborhood. They were quite welcoming and happy about our venture. :-)

Friday, March 27, 6:30 p.m., we met at the lot to meet someone that would give us the same feedback Roy gave, hopefully from a different perspective. We had an appointment with a young lady who did not show then we set up another appointment with another young lady that next Saturday, April 4th at 2 -3 p.m., and she was able to make it. We received very useful information from her as well.

Baltimore was scheduled to have Clean-up Day on April 18, so we discussed having our own Clean-up Day at the plot as the city would drop off supplies such as brooms, rakes, trash bags, and disperse dumpster trucks. On Sunday, April 5, 9-10:30 a.m. we distributed flyers in the neighborhood where the plot is located.

Thursday, April 9, 6-8:20 p.m.
Saturday, April 11, 4-5:30 p.m., we distributed flyers again.
Wednesday, April 15, 6-8 p.m.

All meetings that do not have a comment were meetings in which, initially, we talked about if we were prepared to commit to this endeavor, the work involved, our dream and ideas of who in the community we wanted to reach and work with, and what we wanted to use the garden for. After these initial meetings, we began to discuss how to tell the community about our journey/advertising. Later, we discussed exactly what we would possibly plant, where to buy the seeds, etc. Presently we are in discussion about fund raising, applying for grants, and design. We are always talking about design! :-)