okay, can you hear me okay? Okay everybody welcome everybody. I'm so excited to talk to you about doing the community gardens in an urban park. And of course like community gardens can be in more places in urban parks so this can sit there for Mesa can kind of pass through could be a neighborhood or black below. You know next to your house. But I just want to introduce myself. I'm Angela Merkel Thomas. I have been gardening now in the city for 15 years. I never thought I would be a gardener. I didn't know about the urban gardening history that the city had I grew up I'm from Puerto Rico. So I grew up with tons of stuff going on in my backyard now that only you know how climate places grow food. So when I discovered that people had been growing food in their backyard, in the community gardens in the city, I was like, Why didn't nobody tell me in all these years? So in 2009, I started with argon roots. Assad would became a member of keep going despite our resource problems, and I just took a course and I always tell this little tiny story to let people know how I started gardening because I thought I was allergic to tomatoes my whole life. Like I had a sensitivity to them, couldn't get them from the store, couldn't eat them at restaurants always pick them off. And a group of people put in a community garden around the corner from where I live, and I would never stop and when I thought we were putting in community I don't like all this cool, you know, some cute whatever. And so the following year, when the garden was kind of like flourishing, I went in there and I looked around and saw these beautiful tomatoes and I was thinking, Okay, I'll just pick some for my husband got home, I washed it, and then I took a knife and I said, I have never seen that tomato look like this. It's like that. I was like, it was so juicy and red and like it's different. And I'm gonna let you just try a little piece. I would start with like, literally that that moment I was like, how do I learn to do this? And that's very nice January I entered a community urban garden class and I loved how the garden so that's really how I got gardening so it can inspire like just seeing something something else doing something in a in a park can inspire someone to start gardening, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this is because this year I became the guy manager at the Palmer Park community gardens and all the visitors that were coming into the space. I mean, it was really quite amazing just to hear them like the excitement some of them are gardeners, but a lot of them work and they were like we did nobody could do this kind of roaming in the city and in our yard so it inspired them to want to grow as well. So we'll cover some of this stuff through them through the presentation
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.
So one of the things that I love about community gardens which is why the ones that are in my neighborhood was so key is that it did bring neighbors together. In our community gardens there people from all over you know, they're not all like surrounding the park. So we come together and be grown together and we learn from each other. We share a harvest you know with other people and we share harvest with the people that come and visit the space and that's always exciting for me because you know, sometimes people are like, Oh, can I have that neon pepper or you know, you have some herbs and we can just like bite them in they're given to them and that's probably like my most favorite part is when people come into the garden, but they also you eat healthier. I mean, I used to run the early childhood program for key parties, right? And when I tell you that does work, when children don't they plant a seed and they nurture the plant, and then they see the fruit that comes from it. They actually want to try it even if they've never eaten it before. And sometimes us too, you know, like there's people that may not have never had AIDS in airplane but if you grow it up for a recipe and see if I can start you know using it more. So we definitely encourage that. You know young people gotten with you in gardens. It brings people to the garden and just just everybody gets involved with growing food, which is something that we have to do as a community
so this is the part that I was like, Oh, that he really likes to talk about this because we had some issues at Palmer park this year. But every garden so I know a lot of people with community gardens and one of the things that when you're in the public space is that you can't you don't have cameras you don't have a way of, you know, fencing off the space. And so people will help themselves to stuff sometimes they will damage their thing or harvest before it's ready. And that's just the that's just what happens. There's nothing you can do to control when we do what we can to like educate people when they come into the space to let them know you know, oh, that's not quite ready or you know, if you come back next week or you know, we tried to work with them, but you know, there's going to be people that are going to go in there and do something that you may not want them to do. And then we always find the year even with the cases. They want to eat healthy too. So I don't get that anymore. You know some people get really upset when you know, they're five, you know, tomato and like, you know, eaten up and you know, they were waiting on that harvest. But you know, you can't really stop them from eating good food either. And then this year, for the first time ever, we had some situations that were part of that we never faced in the five years that we've been running the bed so we had someone take over someone's gotten bed which is very odd. They just sell it up late at night and started planting up a bed and we then catch them for like two weeks. But we you know we finally I mean we had a conversation what happened was that the gentleman didn't speak any English and maybe in the country that that he was from he was a farmer because when I tell you that it was laid out, I was like okay, whatever this is not what they're doing. But they you know, they took over someone's garden bed so you know eventually he brought someone to the space that we could communicate. I've tried everything to Google translate everything. But so that was something new that happened. We also had a few encounters that were uncomfortable because it is an open space. So there was a few gardeners that kind of got into it back and forth with people because they were harvesting from bands or you know, they were like draining water catchment. And you know, so things like that were happening and so we're trying to try to figure out like next year, okay, how do we mitigate some of that, you know, how do we put up more signage, maybe have more of a presence in the garden so that people feel like spaces cared for and maybe they don't, they won't do it as often. And then the other thing that happened they had the inside like we're almost next to the woods wooded area but not like not real close, but like past the wooded area. There was a camp set up like you know, they just set up a whole camp site, and the police had to get involved and so what happened was that they were also coming to get the water and using that today and so you know you had situations like that and then there were some people that were coming out from there, and then sleeping on the benches in the garden while we worked the garden and just like staring at people make me feel a little uncomfortable. So that's the only drawback with a public face. But we try to do the best we can we try to work with people, you know, we try to give them some information. We try to give them food, you know, we just try to make them feel like okay, this space is awesome for me.
So one of the things that I love to win is planning activities in the garden. We had quite a few classes this this season that brought people to the space because there's a new disc golf course at home or park. A lot of new people are coming to our space because we're like kinda like the parking lot is in the same area where the garden is. So they were looking for the course and they would come in our garden like you know, just kind of a curious, are they looking figure out how to get back here. And so they were finding out about our garden for the first time because a lot of them first time was to Palmer Park. And so we were able to host some classes and more stuff in the garden that also brings community together you learn something I classes you know, you can attend them whatever age you are, and it's just a way to get a gauge the community around the state. We also have our own like gardens specific annual events, but because then you keep up with people for current apartments. Is the reason why the garden but they have so many events every year. And so a lot of the events take place right in that area where the colorful building is with the circles. And so a lot of the annual events tend to bring people into the garden space as well. So that's another way that we've tried to talk to the sound of a bubble will come into space. And like I mentioned before, we get a lot of families and young people who are just curious like like, you know, they don't know like but Ogunquit looks like or you know, they are just curious about the smells of the herbs. So you know we always try to make sure that we talk to the young people and tell him like what we're doing what we're growing and sometimes we get they get encouraged and they like oh I want to grow something at home too. So that's part of the process as well. So bringing art into your heart space can inspire a lot of people saw the workshop before ours talked about, you know some of the prairie space that they had that was part and so there's other things that you can do to bring beautification into the park and we do have is not part of our garden space per se, but we didn't have some root trees. So if you've been Dipankar we have a beautiful apple orchard and actually wasn't this year. This year might have been last year they were able to provide all of the apples necessary for their harvest festival that happened so it was really wonderful in the habit, such an abundance that so many people came and got an apples from from the orchard. So that's another way to just add another space that actually provides food for people in animals and animals eaten apples too. And there's also a butterfly garden space. And then they talked about the modeling part. I was like yeah, that happened upon the part two, and we had a sign but they mowed down on the butterfly garden that we had. But you know, sometimes we have our turnover and you have new people they just don't know. We there on the other side. of the world where there's a green garden space as well. So that's another thing that you can do to to add to our prairie native plant garden flower garden. So those kinds of things like when I'm listening now, it doesn't mean as much upkeep so if you like don't have the capacity you don't have enough volunteers, you can still do those things and beautify and bring you know some food into the into the environment, whether it's for us to consume or the pollinators that the birds
and these are just some of the pictures. We have so many pictures from this year when we did some of the pictures, some of the things that we did in the garden space and previous years. And we also we brought a lot of our own medicinal and T type of plants to this Kameel we have letters, different types of tomatoes. This is that Asian eggplant. We this is what the former manager saw and sometimes we get surprised by some of the stuff that we grow because some of this stuff gets so big in the end, just like calendula sees and we collect seeds at the end of each season so that we can have some seats to either share or it's as well next season. And then this was the group that this year they built some new garden beds because we had so we had some on one side and so we just kind of wanted to mirror so we you know every year they did something for us and that was that was one of the things they did write this, even if this was the field crew this year. So after we had that situation where the deer ate up almost all of the garden somebody started and we started to put in these cages and so they the two of them helped to put into cages. For the gardeners that maybe weren't able to do so. So this is a great year because we got to do so many wonderful like upgrades to the garden. And then we even have a medicinal walk in the garden and in the going into trails for the woods. We had a Earth TV tray came and did a walk through the garden space just to show if I what is in our garden that that you could use to heal ourselves
and like I said, I'm the garden manager for people for farming park if you go to their website you can you know find me or you can email the group and you know if you have any questions keep going to trade and another great resource. They support over 2200 Gardens in Detroit in Highland Park in Hamtramck. Most of the members of the Palmer Park community garden they are also members of keep growing the trace garden Resource Program. So I know I probably said that's way too fast. But if anybody has any specific questions for me about Yes.
So you guys have a speech How do you a person get a space like say,
say to fly a box. Now, because it's all popular. We have never had an extra bed available. Unless the Minecraft knows that oh, I'm not coming back next year. Yeah, our bases are rented. Yeah. For some people like the boys are visual police. I can't really explain it but before that is over the community guy, but now they do with the larger
community there too. They
just mean things. Well.
The FAA was considered a small bet. It's like a three by two. It's Yeah, as long as Tom. But are they ever gonna get into 2004 and they'll get really big that most of you guys are not stay on that for like a second. What did you find? When they got started? I don't know if you might know this. I don't know where they got the original five days. But I do know that Home Depot helps a lot. They do a lot of the city of Detroit brands, whatever's available through the city. They get funding through that. But I don't know where the original money got but the Home Depot was there from the very beginning so that could have been the partnership. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because this year they gave us 5005.
Yes. So it could have been memberships. I don't know how they did in that first year. Some of the mayor but yeah, they they I mean, they they they are so supportive board and people come around that way that God wouldn't exist without their support. Easily.
had a question about you mentioned getting community buy in? Yeah. So what are some strategies that you could recommend to get community buy in and so
the are you at the park now?
I've worked for Detroit Public School. Oh, okay.
So usually like whoever's coming to your facility, whether it is your school or community center, whether coming to like events or activities there. Those are the people that you want to ask, Do you want a community garden? You know, if they say yes, then that tells you that, you know, people want to do it.
Oh, the schools have their own sluggard Yeah, the problem is that it's not necessarily open.
Yeah, there's a community. Those are community school gardens and we work with school gardens to the program. That was a different than community
initiative is to work specifically itself was to try to engage with some community organizations to see if there's any fire we're short school. I'm all over. Oh,
okay. Okay. Because you know, we work with you. And I'm, I'm in southwest Detroit a lot too. And I'm working on a project. But yeah, let's connect in okay, because that can connect you to the few people that are unhappy. In your head question and here's a question. My
name is Rachel. But also on the committee Advisory Council for the MSU center. Partnership. And that's my plan, which is that they specialize in freedom. That is something that you make up your part. They're an excellent resource. That's the focus. Mike Edwards. Receiving will talk to you. And my question is, do you is there any like movement to like, create a registry of gardens for Detroit, or we just
had this conversation because I was asking as I'm returning to keep voting in unbinding that a lot of people don't even know where the buttons are. So I mean, I've talked to like, people that are joining the program and they have like five buttons sliders on them. So they are working on bad things. So as they started doing, that might take about two years ago, and they're gonna there's gonna be a push for 2024 that we map the gardens. That's going to be keep going in short, but we're working in partnership with a VIERA who just got hired as the first director of RBS. Yeah, so we're, we're trying to do that because it is important to know what's out here. I mean, there's a lot of food but a lot of people don't even know that it's available.
I said gardens, soil tested by MSU Extension, but who tested for like LED and the kinds of things where would you get soil tested? Yeah.
Like they work with the lab. Fortunately, we wish we could work with MSU to do it, but they don't do the testing that we need. So they work with an aptitude.
Yeah, so you can keep
if you invest waterfall is that if you're if you're a member of p 42. I would say support deploy on apartment get your membership paid for one full test per year. And actually, think about it. It's $50. So there is taking a loss by providing that therapy, so I'd recommend that if you aren't going to do it. Go in to find it to be a member of a different soil test. Once you get on the disk.
It's not just men it's also like coordinate
Yeah.
So like CeCe do you need to add something to the soil to make that happen? Yeah. So they do quite a bit now like to break down the tech when they give you the results and they don't actually know what they're not just keep up the safety of food, because that definitely brought flowers you know, that they'll tell you that the safety of raw food and then they'll also let you know who to recommendations to to improve.
I have like two questions. I
guess the first question is, like, let's say you're in a neighborhood and your neighbors have like, community gardens. There's
a lot here that would be great for it. How do you go about like inquiry
and access was paid off and help was very helpful. So you'll be okay there's a whole process that is limited that your best in Excel but I want to use the grid. Let's find out motion. So we created our area, click on the parcel to the ownership of the document economy website and see the taxes that you can tell and then in the delay of pay that and all that. I'm sure yeah. They have a family party, but they do help with data access acquisition and they feel the counselor is important.
And then my second question is, if you could speak a little bit on sort of like
the hierarchy
of like, leadership of the community garden obviously the ideas like everyone's like we're all working together. Yeah,
it can be Yeah, I thought the
community garden
and the one that was about a quarter that into that got me kind of started. We had an issue with that one because there was the people that kind of started it. They didn't live in the community. And they were trying to like tell the people who live in the community what to do. So it became kind of like an issue. But what we try to do with people on Detroit and any of the garden gardeners in the city is we try to work with each other like we sit down we mediate you know, we try to talk things through to try it we there is actually a mediation for gardeners and farmers. So we just try to work it out and sometimes it's not gonna work out. And then you have to kind of figure out like either you dissolve or do you remove yourself from that space, and let the people have it or you try to work with the people. So it just depends, but you know, it's difficult because a lot of times there's new people that come into an area that people who've been there and see them as outsiders saying that, you know, in my neighborhood and navigate that, which is one of the reasons why we encourage you know, get out there goes to some meeting before you start you know, say anything things and telling people what they need find out you know, maybe somebody already decided to do that, or has tried to do that. And so maybe that that's the way it would be a partner, I think is the way to go to to do what I want to do and you've got to just be okay with that.
Question, by the way is run organizations called George zation organization, and I'm also a member with the key one in short, the resource programs. So with keyboarding trade, they do a lot for you, which is taught by soil testing. We've got several lots of Tampakan lots and what they do, they'll soil test those lots and tell you what you can do with that. Me personally because of we're in a residential area, I don't dig into the ground for edible plants or non edible plants. So we have a project called native butterfly metal with a project we started with Detroit from two cities. So we do to that as well. Also we have the rainwater catchment system that we need to water those plants we use that. So as far as the gardens go, the edible gardens, I raised the gardens which you mentioned. I call them ADA itself accessible for kids that can reach up for people in wheelchairs. They want to come through and do gardening for seniors and we have seating so they can sit there and also tend to the gardens as well. The kid running short will supply you with radar what the best amateur and depends on what is the only you come out with put it together. And we can get started that way. So we've done some plants. I've taught kids how to get to the point of harvest, and all the plants that we've given them back to the community. So it kind of works that way. As far as the property section looking for. Detroit City parcel is a website you can go to, and you can look at every parcel within the city and see who owns that or whose name that's on that. Regret and she mentioned as well as data driven. Those are two of the platforms that you can use to find out ownership or parties going through the chart lamping to acquire this muscle. So it can start with if it's something that they can accept, okay, you can reach out to them and go through the deployment process. Thank you
about getting 91 C. So you need to find a company with the supply. So you can actually start stat 90 of the company. We tend to use di D but there's like 20 companies that are reputable. And if you ever have a question like that, ask me the African continent as to the non GMO I'll be the coffee bunnies, right because we can give you the resources because there's some company that obviously you know may not rise Good to see you know we have the the companies that dominate you know, good Steve, if you want to have this these were your
questions well thank you
want to hear but if you have any questions for me, you can go to keep running that
or or
or just toss that me in the hallway and and I appreciate you
