Community gardens are growing across the Midlands. One of the best ways to get to know your neighbors is by sharing the enterprise of gardening with them. The first of a series of seminars on community garden planning was presented at the Green Quad Residence Hall and Garden on the University of South Carolina campus January 23.

Seminar host, Jason Craig, assistant director of the Green Quad Learning Center for Sustainable Futures, led participants on a tour of the organic garden off south Main Street. The garden implements the permaculture principle of plant guilds or ecosystems that support each other. The classic example of guild plants is the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. Currently, broccoli, cabbage, Swiss chard, carrots, onions, garlic, parsley, and rosemary are actively growing in association with strawberry plants and blueberries. Young urban orchard trees showed signs of swelling buds.

Gardening together is one way to get to know your neighbors. Residents in the neighborhood as well as university students and faculty make use of the garden. An anthropology class on food and culture maintains an Arab food garden of fava beans, black garbanzo beans, golden purslane, and rhubarb chard to incorporate into preparing foods of the Middle East.

Carrie Draper, commu- nity organizer for SC Fair Share, defined a community garden as a place where people come together to grow food. She outlined the most common reasons to create community gardens:

• Food security refers to availability of a safe food supply. Thirteen out of every 100 people in SC do not have adequate access to food to sustain them.

• Growing fresh food improves mental and physical health.

• Gardens become resources for the school curriculum.

• Growing food is budget–wise move.

Cabbages fare well in the winter garden at the Green Quad on campus. • Community gardens develop and preserve otherwise vacant and vandalized property.

• Immigrant populations use gardens to preserve ties to their culture by growing foods native to their roots.

• Historically oppressed and marginalized populations can find pathways to participation and empowerment in a community garden.

Ryan Nevius, project coordinator for Sustainable Midlands, discussed steps in the planning process of getting the dream of a community garden into the ground from recruiting team members, setting the first organizational meeting, formulating a mission statement, taking inventory of skills, listing tools and resources available, to assigning committees specialized tasks.

Participants including homeowners, park district personnel, master gardeners, wildlife habitat developers, teachers, and social welfare workers met in small groups to discuss their dream gardens and formulate possible mission statements.

The Arab food garden is a USC anthropology class project. Future seminars will address such topics as site preparation, companion planting, and a bus tour of local community gardens.

Community Garden

Resources www.communitygarden.org www.greenquadcommunity. org www.sustainablemidlands. org
Jason Craig, assistant director of the Green Quad Learning Center for Sustainable Living, oversees garden operations.
Strawberries grow extremely well in the garden and add festive color in winter and summer.