Okay, so a little history about our park community garden. So before I was really involved with the garden, it was an open garden space. They had about you know, a few beds they started and they they just kept adding beds every year. And then in 2019 they decided, You know what, it's a little bit too much for one person to kind of manage the space. Let's start renting out the beds. And that's how I got involved. So I ended up renting a bed in the garden and they rent this to either individuals, families, neighborhood groups, organizations, churches, so I just said we're gonna get a band for our group. I'm part of the girl track. And so we walked in Palmer park all the time. And so I say, well, since we're walking here, let's get a bed. And so that's how I got involved with it. And then so this is our fifth year having the Dance Minute and this year, I got a chance to be the garden Manager, which really doesn't mean that you know, the gardeners advance the band. They're responsible for their own like bed space, but they like all the watering and maybe some of the weeding and some of the common spaces the garden manager manages and we got to leave and because we have a partnership with Home Depot. So I'm assuming that some of you may want to start a garden in your urban park, possibly. Okay, so just thinking about that if you're Are you growers is anybody like brand new to gardening? Okay, anybody already growing in their community or at home? Okay. So what are you what do you have to consider when you want to start a garden just give you some soil, clean soil, sun, sun, these people are predators out how to keep critters out. We have an issue with water, water time, us. Time. Time are alive. Yes. Now, when you're in an urban park with the other thing that you have to consider the people and that there's really no sense of privacy, okay. So you have to kind of keep that in mind as you develop the vision. You want to first find out, do people in your community in your near your point to point out coming to the park? Do they even want a community garden in the park? So one of the things that we do first in let me backtrack, I just started working for keep going to trade. So the organization I started gardening when I'm back with them, I'm the guard development manager. That was before I had submitted for this for this presentation. So if you have any questions about that program, I can tell you, but as part of that program, one of the things that we always encourage everyone to do is to engage the community that you want to participate in the community garden. Because if you don't really want to help with the garden, then there's no point in actually doing the garden in that space. But when the other part is somebody say clean soil. Always, always no matter if you do have raised beds or you don't doing containers, you always want to test the soil where you want to be either planting or working in. So some people say well if I'm doing a raised bed, do I have to test the soil? Yes, because even if you're doing a raised bed, the area around that bed might be contaminated. And really all you're doing is making sure that there's no lead and lead us. That's very important. So that's like one of the first steps that you do when you want to do a community garden. You have to consider like what was in that spot before? Because the space that we use and Palmer Park was an old softball diamond. So do you have to say okay, well, what was there before could have contaminated the grounds. Maybe there's not going to be a way for you even do some gardening in that space. So you have to consider all of those things. You want to make sure you have volunteers I think that's been like a common theme of getting help for your project. If you don't have a sufficient volunteers do not take on building a community garden. You don't want it to fall only on one or two people burnout is real. So if you want to at least 10 solid people to plan the garden to execute it and to maintain it. But then you also want to bring in groups like we have a partnership with Home Depot where they come in once a year they do almost like a whole revamp of our garden. And it's wonderful because we don't pay for it. They actually provide the tools they they find us they bring the people in so that's a way for you to maintain the garden space if you don't have like your core group of people that are already working with you. So consider like what are the six Do you already have in your parks in your neighborhood? Who do you already work with maybe some funders who are already funding some other programs, they might not to help you fund the garden because they're gonna eat something that you're going to need to build out that space and counterpart we have really large space beds. They're 20 feet by four. So those are really really big. Normally most Raised beds are four by eight. We we did them that way because there was two reasons One, to build up the soil, but also to make it more like accessible so to do they have to like back down. So that was the other reason but you know, it also looks really neat and you know, much neater when you have all of them kind of off, you know lined up equally. And then when you want to do like additional projects like protecting them from critters, you can actually build pages to go over the race bed so that you can stop most critters not at all. So in Palmer park we deal a lot with deer. So that was the issue that we faced initially when we started renting the beds out from one day to the next someone could plant their opinion and the whole thing will be the next day. So we have to build the cages so that we can protect it from the deer and we use deer netting which is something that they don't like to touch so that you know stop that issue but it doesn't stop all critters. You know we still had like I had a rabbit in my bed early this season. It lived in my bed for like two weeks a rat was a lot I couldn't catch it. I tried everything. I want to hurt the little button. But I have rabbits biggest squirrels. We have birds. We have people that come in and take things and damage things so it doesn't stop everything but it does prevent you know some of the bigger damages from happening. Now when you think about the type of community garden that you can have, so usually most people think community garden means Oh, anyone from the community can just walk in there. And if they see something, they can just come in harvesting some or are set up that way. But they can also have what they call the demonstration garden which is not quite the same as that where you just pretty much have been set up and you have signage. You tell people like what's growing variety of work for me. So you actually educate as well as growing food. And then you have the one that we do at Comic Con this is renting out the beds. Now the rentals are not. They're not It's not high. We actually charge only $30 for the year, which is not bad considering the two games that they depend on for you're getting soil so we get compost. In addition to the topsoil that's in the bands. They also provide water we have water we have the water catchment, and then we get water from the city and then we have tools in in the tool shed and then we also have a greenhouse. So all of that is is for $30 a year and so in addition to that, a lot of us are also members of the garden Resource Program which is another you know, 15 Either in Fitzy for family or 30 for community and then they provide the seeds to transplants, they probably can get more compost, but then they also have additional resources sometimes for gardens, especially community gardens. So it really is a great program kind of combined $60 a year you you pretty much are set for the season and you have more than enough sometimes we we get like one one community garden space and then be shared with another space just because it's so much so you really have to figure out like what fits with your heart space. You know, do you want to have an open garden space where anyone can access it? Do you just want it to be a demonstration garden or do you want to rent out the beds each season, which takes a little bit more work to do you know, but it at least get some some buy in you don't have to worry about managing the whole space and then I always recommend start small. We didn't start out with 20 Garden dads start small think about your capacity and then build up from that.