UPDATED: On Saturday, May 9 at 11 a.m. with some earth, sunlight and your help, a little magic will happen on Bainbridge Island.
A group of volunteers are putting in an organic community garden at Island Terrace apartments, the island’s only low income housing for all ages, located at the corner of High School Road and Ferncliff. And we need your labor, skills, and donations of materials and cash.
The idea grew out of a community garden meeting in March, sponsored by Sustainable Bainbridge. With the enthusiastic support of Renee’ Levesque, the manager of Island Terrace, Kathy Cooper of Housing Resources Board, Chuck Estin, Debbi Lester, and Island Terrace residents, we’re ready for the May 9 work party.
The first site visit at Island Terrace
There are enough beds for everyone who has signed up (16 tenants). The garden includes a row of wheelchair accessible raised beds, a kids’ garden, a row for Helpline House, and a compost pile. Future improvements, depending on community support, may include additional plots, benches, fencing and maybe even a picnic area.
Community gardens strengthen their neighborhoods. They help improve the ecosystem by filtering rainwater and helping keep groundwater clean. Because this garden will be organic, it will reduce the amount of chemicals used on the Island Terrace grounds. And a garden is a great way for people on a limited income to grow healthy, high quality fruits and vegetables for themselves and their families.
One of the most important things the garden will be growing is community. At a planning potluck last month, residents finalized the garden design, signed up for plots and designated a garden coordinator from each of the complex’s four buildings. People already have veggie starts growing in their apartments.
Volunteers from around the island are pitching in. BHS students in the Camp Siberia program will lend their strength and enthusiasm to the work party. Bay Hay and Feed is donating enough organic fertilizer for the whole garden.
But we need much more and have no source of funding, other than generous islanders like you.
Here’s how you can help.
This week a load of good dirt arrived. The crew, l-r: Terrence Scott (Maintenance), Jeanette Hill (HRB Maintenance Supervisor), Kathy Cooper (HRB), Renee' Levesque (Island Terrace manager), Althea Paulson, Debbi Lester, and Bill Short (Magical Soil).
* Donate funds to cover the purchase of a wheelchair accessible planting container – $110 each (4 total)
* Help pay for good organic soil $50 per bed (12 beds)
* Help pay for drainage gravel – $40 (need two truck loads). Want to help pick up and deliver?
* Cover the cost of supplies for wooden framed garden beds – $50 each (6 total)
* Donate veggie starts.
* Cash donations for tools, supplies, and a gathering space/picnic area for the garden.
* Or just show up at Island Terrace on May 9th and dig in!
Contributions are tax-deductible and should be made to:
Housing Resources Board
P.O. Box 11391
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
Be sure to designate your donation for “Island Terrace Community Garden.”
For more information, you can email me at bainbridgenotebook@gmail.com or add a comment to this post.
See you on May 9!
And check out Tad Sooter’s great article about the garden in the Bainbridge Review.
Althea, it seems to me that we could find someone to challenge the community for this noble green gardening undertaking.
If you can find such a donor, I will happily make a generous contribution.
Ezra says well intentioned people like Harry Plotter become part of the problem, instead of working toward a solution. I think Harry wants his name on the donor board for nothing.
Ezzie says he is no accountant, but I should challenge Harry with some of mother’s old Bank of America stock.
“They started by foreclosing on the dirt farmers in the Salinas Valley, therefore it’s entirely fitting they should start up dirt farmers on Bainbridge Island,” he says. Ezzie told me I could maximize my tax deduction by declaring last year’s inflated stock value.
I am no accountant either. I am matching anything Harry pledges at two for one with mother’s stock at today’s value. And I am not matching any coupons.
Althea, Ezra says this is your launch for City Council. Is this true? We would vote for you twice, absentee of course.
Ciao from Navels, Penny Wise and Ezra Pound Foolish
Dear Ms. Paulson. I wish to pledge 5% of my food expenditures for one year to the community garden at Island Terrace. My food budget is only $100-$200/monthly, but over the year this would make a small contribution.
Island Terrace tenants were previously forbidden to plant anything in the ground, and even for those who managed a few potted plants, these are subjected to broad upwind and uphill pesticide and herbicide applications.
I would like to challenge others to pledge a small percentage of their food budget as part of a permanent solution to an age old problem. Advocating for safe and dignified public housing is not part of the problem. For many of us here, and our children, the means to grow our own food, instead of a prohibition, is an extraordinary gift.
We tenants are demonstrating with this garden project that we are not looking for a hand out, but a hand up; and we are willing to grow as much of our own food as we are able and space allows. Thanks very much to everyone who is making this possible.
Steven Ziolkowski
Island Terrace Habitant
Thank you very much! I do hope others do the same. How about some of our local politics junkies? Any takers for a great cause?
I’m with you, Althea! I just need to get the checkbook balanced after the Council-Manager campaign…
Because I have a niece confined to a wheelchair, I’d like to donate funds for an accessible planting container (even though she lives on the East Coast.)
We can always count on you and Debbi Lester to come up with the most creative, compassionate solutions to community problems. Thank you for taking this on. It’s a wonderful idea, and in the perfect location.
Althea–in addition to funding, you might want to explore various educational components. The site at Island Terrace is not without challenges and gardening isn’t always intuitive; it’s important to have success with a project like this so that enthusiasm will remain strong. It might be fun to contact the Master Gardener program ( http://kitsap.wsu.edu/hort/mastergardeners.htm ) to see if they might be interested in holding some classes in things like worm composting, composting, mason bee cultivation, etc. The Island Terrace community room would be a good location for classes.
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Poof. The Saturday garden fest was a smashing success with student volunteers in equal numbers to community helpers and tenants young and old.
Wooden raised beds were cut and nailed and staked, accessible planters were filled with dirt, vegetables and edible flowers.
The secret life of plants leads to their magical thinking. Everyone else was exceedingly well behaved. Plants were compliant, humans polite and children and animals happy in the sunshine.
Less than one kilowatt was expended in nonrenewable energy, rationally speaking. Poof.