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Wow, what great stories
you send Adam...keep them coming
Shelly in
Ohio
We are stardust *million year old carbon* we are golden *caught in the
devil's bargain* and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden .
. .
----- Original Message -----
From:
A*@aol.com
To: community_garden@mallorn.com
Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 10:22
AM
Subject: [cg] Riverside, CA: ACGA Board
Member Yvonne Savio in the News
Friends,
So far it's two ACGA Board Members
in the papers this month, promoting greening or community gardening - Daniel
Winterbottom, in the NY Times, and now Yvonne Savio, in the Riverside Press
Enterprise!
The West Coast is doing pretty good, so far.
Everbest,
Adam Honigman
Volunteer,
Clinton Community Garden
Gardens have fresh appeal
Inland folks dig
growing number of community patches
01:33 AM PDT on Saturday, June
26, 2004
By SANDRA STOKLEY / The Press-Enterprise
GLEN AVON - To
most people, this month's gray mornings spell "gloom," as in "June gloom."
Not Kathleen Cook.
"It's perfect weather for planting," Cook
said, scanning the leaden skies, a trowel in one hand and tomato plant in the
other.
The energetic 91-year-old, clad in a red-checked flannel
shirt to ward off the morning chill, was one of about a dozen seniors who
began digging up the earth this week at the Jurupa Mountains Cultural Center's
community garden.
Located on a 1-acre patch of land at the Cultural
Center's Granite Hill Drive compound, the community garden offers seniors a
chance to get back in touch with nature while growing their own fresh
vegetables.
For Cook, a lifelong gardening enthusiast, there are other
benefits as well.
"I wanted to socialize with people with similar
interests," the Rubidoux resident said.
The Glen Avon garden is the
latest in a growing number of Inland area community gardens, including one at
the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice's Heritage Park site
on Mission Boulevard.
Other gardens are located in the cities of
Riverside, Redlands, San Bernardino and in Mead Valley.
Yvonne Savio,
who serves on the board of the Ameican Community Gardening Association and
manages the Common Ground Program in Los Angeles, said an increase in
community gardens nationwide is prompted by concerns about pesticide use on
commercially grown produce.
Taste is another issue, she said.
"When you're growing your own produce, you get to pick it at the
moment you want it," Savio said. "You're letting the produce tell you the
moment it's ripest."
Pesticides and freshness is what got Rubidoux
resident Willa Rapstine, 67, involved at the Cultural Center's garden.
"You can buy food in stores that is possibly cheaper, but you have to
deal with produce that is grown by commercial growers," Rapstine said.
She is planting a cornucopia of vegetables: squash, beans, beets,
cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers.
Rapstine is not only a gardening fan.
She's an enthusiastic booster of community gardens.
"There should be
gardens all over for people who need it, to beautify the community and for
children, to give them an appreciation of nature," she said.
Buck
Hemenway, project director for the Cultural Center, said the cost of setting
up the garden - clearing the land and building the beds, installing a watering
system and buying the tools - was underwritten by a grant from "Food For All."
The Virginia-based organization funds anti-hunger programs in the
United States and worldwide.
The Eddie Dee Smith Senior Center and
Summerville at Villa De Anza, a senior residential and assisted-living
facility, are busing in seniors twice a week.
Nestor Aasen, 83, said
the garden gives him more space than the planter boxes he keeps at
Summerville.
Bob Craig, co-director of the Smith Senior Center said
only six seniors have signed up so far. But he expects the number to increase
as word spreads.
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