Clover’s Garden Center located in Berwyn at 7065 W. Cermak Road will be donating 10% of all purchases made with our fundraising flyer the weekend of April 24, 25, and 26.  All anyone has to do is go to Clover’s during these dates, make a purchase, and  give our fundraising flyer to the cashier as they check out.  Clover’s will then send us a check for 10% of the total pre-tax amount of all purchases made with the flyer during that weekend.

So, our goal is to get as many people as possible to buy stuff at Clvoer’s in Berwyn April 24-26 and to present our flyer at the time of purchase. If they don’t present the flyer, we wont get any money back from Clover’s.

What can you do?  Dowload and print the flyer (below) and give it to any of your friends, family, and work coleges who would be interested in buying some plants / garden supplies.  Tell them about the community garden and how their purchase and Clover’s will help us buy materials for raised beds, soil, and seeds so that we can get the garden planted this summer.

here

If you read about us in today’s column and are checking out the website to see what we’ll all about- Welcome!  If you’re looking for more info about the garden or would like to get involved, just email us at fpcommunitygarden@gmail.com.  We look forward to hearing from you! 

Click here to read the article that appeared in the Review last July.

Here are some pictures from the Planting Party fun! Thanks again to all those who helped out. I should also acknowledge a few others who weren’t able to make it to the Planting Party but who will be donating some of their own plant seedlings or other gardening goodies–thanks!

Don’t look now but we’ve got our first planned fundraising event set up, finally! 

On June 13th, 2009 we’ll have a booth set up at the Oak Park Farmer’s Market for a Bake Sale.

If you bake, get those recipes ready.  And if you don’t, put the date on your calendar and stop by to say hi. 

The bad news is that the site is basically a big ole pile of rubble.  (As a side-note, I think the word “rubble” is seriously under-used and under-appreciated and I personally plan to use it every chance I get for a while.)  As Jessica described in her post about taking the soil test samples, there is only about 4 inches of dirt, then she hit rubble in every spot she sampled.  I know it’d be much easier if this site was pure rice dirt just waiting to be planted, but that’s usually not the reality of community gardens.  The idea is usually to take a spot that nobody wants and turn it into something beautiful for the community to enjoy and to create a place where folks who might not have the space to garden can grow their own food.  This is just that sort of space.  We’ll just use raised beds (which many people prefer, anyway) and plant right on top of the rubble.

Bonus good news: Jessica also finally received the results of the soil test and the lead levels were fine for planting.

So, moving forward, our new best friends are the folks over at the Park District of Forest Park.  They currently maintain the property and are very excited to work with us to make the Forest Park Community Garden a success.

What’s the problem, you ask?  The problem is, in four of the five holes I dug, the shovel hit gravel about four inches down.  We knew that there were homes in this spot prior to the expressway, so I can only assume that the gravel we’re hitting is the pulvariezed remains of those homes.

What does this mean for the garden?  Well, it means that in order to use this location at all–regardless of what the soil test tells us about soil toxicity–we will have to build raised beds with at least 12 inch high sides and we’ll have to buy clean topsoil and compost to fill them.  This could actually be really awesome.  Personally I like the look of raised beds as well as the control that starting with all new soil gives us.  A lot of the community gardens you can read about on Google use raised beds, so its not an uncommon practice.  Some of them even use raised beds over concrete to create gardens in abandoned parking lots so its definitely technically do-able.  However, raised beds and the soil to fill them will definitely add costs for us.  The beds should probably be built out of cedar boards, since it weathers well naturally and doesn’t contain any potentially harmful chemicals that treated wood or railroad ties can have.  But cedar is also pretty expensive.  And, of course, we’d also have to build the beds, which isn’t too hard in principal, but would be quite an undertaking at this large of a scale.  Building one bed in your backyard is pretty easy but building 50 beds could take a while.

So, we need to decide whether this discovery is going to mean that the Harlem / I-290 location wont work and start looking for another property.
What do you guys think?

Leave comments to this post and tell me what your feelings are.

Thanks for reading!

But, don’t get too excited quite yet. The land isn’t “ours”, and as we move forward in the process, not having a piece of land to use runs the risk of hindering progress toward that very goal.
Gina and I realized pretty early on that there was going to be a question about which should come first: raising the money to build the garden or securing a piece of land to use. How do we ask for money if we don’t know the details of the space we will be using such as soil conditions and availability of water and a fence? How do we convince people that we’re serious if we don’t have a space to point to? But, how do we convince the Village, the Park District, and all others involved that we’re really serious about this idea until we are able to demonstrate that we can really raise the money to pull this off? Which comes first, the money or the land?

After the meeting last night, I think we’ve decided that the answer is: the money should come first. Money is always one of the most important questions that comes up no matter who we’re talking to about the garden. How are we going to raise the money to do this? (Answer: We really have no idea and little other than a feeling that “things will work out somehow” to guide us.) How much money do we have? (Answer: Zero, negative actually if you count the money Gina and I have already spent out of our own pockets on the website, food for the first meeting, and other stuff I’ve already forgotten about.) Also, we are beginning to get the feeling that getting the land situation set is going to take a while. There will be red tape, lease agreements, governmental approval to get through. While all that is happening (most of it is out of our hands) why not spend our time and energy improving our financial situation?

So that’s what we’re doing, folks. At the meeting we came up with several ideas regarding funding sources. They include: fundraising events such as car washes, hot dog stands, and restaurant give-back days; soliciting money and in-kind donations (aka: garden supplies rather than money) from local landscape / garden businesses; and any grant program we can find. I left the meeting feeling very optimistic about the ideas we came up with and the level of energy the group has to put toward pursuing them. We’re also starting to get a more realistic hold on just how much this is all going to cost us.

We found out earlier this week that there is no water access at the park currently and that it will cost $5,000 to have water access installed. This sounded great, since we had been told that the dog park paid $13,000 for their water access. $5,000 seems like a steal, although it pretty much doubles our original budget. Other major spending items which may or may not be in our future include: clean soil and raised beds which would be necesary if the soil tests positive for lead (we’ll have those results in about three weeks); and the cost of a new, prettier and more secure fence, if we decide that the short rickety not-so-pretty fence that’s there right now wont work. We’ll also soon be registering as a nonprofit corporation which will make it a lot easier for us to accept donations and get a bank account and all that stuff.

Thanks to everyone who came to the meeting last night and brought such great energy and enthusiasm. About once I week I get overwhelmed and wonder if I have the time and energy to see this project through. However, all I have to do is meet up with some of my garden groupies and I feel all better again. I hope that the garden itself can serve a similar purpose for all of us once its up and running: give us a place to relax, get away from the stresses of everyday life, and recharge.

Thanks for reading.

The Forest Park Review published an article in today’s paper about our efforts to garner support for the community garden.  I think Jessica and I both agree that we hate the picture.  The photographer that took it was really nice.  We asked him what we should do as far as posing and he informed us that we should just act like he’s not there.  We were like “dude, we would totally NOT be here if you hadn’t asked us to come!” Now that the article has hit the newspaper, we’re really hoping people will visit the website, take the survey and maybe even sign up to help with the garden. 

The Forest Park Review is a community newspaper published every Wednesday.  I love it because they only publish local interest articles.  I have no idea how many Forest Park residents read the newspaper, but I read it, and I don’t even read newspapers.  

Our next step is to set up another meeting to begin to develop strategies for planning and fundraising. 

We’re still looking for ways to get the word out and recruit new volunteers to help plan and fund-raise for the community garden so leave us a comment if you’ve got any good ideas.

The flyers have been made and tomorrow we’ll be going door-to-door to some local businesses to ask them to allow us to put a sign in their window. 

We’ll also be taking pictures of the potential sites that have been mentioned so far.  Stay tuned, they’ll be posted here later.