Re: Local Event: Lubbock, TX El Jardin Revitalization, 3/23/6

**A*@aol.com**

Dear Phillip,

I had the good luck of attending the American Community Gardening  
Association's "Growing Commnities," training earlier this year, created by the  ACGA's 
"From the Roots Up" program. Key to the two day session was a textbook  that 
includes, in addition to tons of great ideas, step-by-step workshops in  
Community Organizing, Asset-Based Community Development ( which I'll talk to you  
later about in this e-mail) and how to Create and Strengthen a Community Garden  
Organization.

The text: "Growing Communities Curriculum: Community Building and  
Organizational Development through Community Gardening" By Jeannette Abi-Nader,  Kendall 
Dunnigan and Kristen Markley ( Edited by Jeanette Abi-Nader & David  Buckley) 
is only one of the ACGA's great publications, and can be purchased  through 
the group's website: _http://www.communitygarden.org_ 
(http://www.communitygarden.org)  .  The website, which is free has so much good information, advice, 
and links to  local groups listed by state,that it really would make an awful 
lot of sense to  get a ream of paper and print out alot of it over the course 
of a weekend. 

And it would probably make great sense, for you to join the ACGA, if only  
for the discounts to local community garden seminars and trainings in you  
region, and a discount to the upcoming Los Angeles Community American Community  
Community Gardening Association  this coming September, I believe. 

My two cents worth: That said, you should look at what your assets are, and  
the needs of your community and how you can create a win-win situation for 
your  community.

Most community gardens are organizations of people who like to garden  and....

And what?  Well some community garden like to raise food for the  hungry in 
their communities, making contributions to food pantries, senior  citizen's 
homes, schools or teaching kids how food grows, as opposed  to gets bought in 
supermarkets and Mc Donalds. 

For other groups it's folks who like to garden and.... create a  safe public 
space for people to meet and talk that isn't a mall,or a dangerous,  
underfunded and policed park.  Or some folks like to garden  and...create native plant 
habitats, small community botanic-type gardens and  nature habitats. 

Some folks like to garden and...create a space where performing  arts events, 
music, and sculpture takes place. Other folks like to garden...and  create a 
safe haven for seniors and children, using the place for physical  
rehabilitation for limited movement seniors or as a place to teach and nuture  kids about 
nature and how to eat right. 

You have to look around and decide, after taking a good walk around your  
neighborhood, what your community garden needs to do and....that will bring  
people in your community garden and make it flourish .

Lubbock, TX, like most places in America has hungry people, so I'd  suggest a 
good starting place might be setting aside a good number of  those plots to 
grow food for your local food pantry and advertise your garden as  a "resource 
in the fight against hunger in our community." Then I'd  put some little 
pieces in your local newspapers that your garden, being  started up again, under 
the aegis of your not-for-profit, needs the  donation of tools that might be 
lying around in people's garages and attics and  that your not-for profit would 
be happy to give them a receipt  for tax purposes.  

I'd also write up some letters to the local Home Depot, plant center,etc  
about your project, and have someone start a blog or small website ( hosted on  
the server of your local not-for-profit) which whould have pictures  of folks 
donating tools, the good work that you're doing and the gardeners  happy faces 
as they're doing good. 

You see there are lot of folks who like to garden, but if they can  donate 
their skills to grow flowers for a hospital, senior center or church (  altar 
flowers), food to feed hungry folks, or teach skills to young folks, it  becomes 
an organization of folks who like to garden, and....

Good luck in your challenge - Get other's to share in it and to start to  
take responsibility - this wasn't, as I gathered, about you, but started up  
again out of your willingness to do work.  Your job, to  quote "Mission 
Impossible," is to get people enthused enought that they are  going to be willing to 
take responsibility and leadership so you can  concentratate on "gardening 
and..." 

Good luck, 
Adam Honigman
A gardener from Hell's Kitchen, NYC

. Your 15 year old garden, as you said, is organized under the aegis of a  
pre-existing not-for-profit and has lost the energy of the original organizers.  
And you said you have no garden tools.  

What I'd do is I'd create a letter, printed on the  stationery of your 
sponsoring not-for-profit saying that the 

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