First, the good news.  We received word on Monday November 3rd that we CAN use the Harlem site for the new community garden.  This has taken much longer than any of us imagined, although I’m not sure why I would imagine anything dealing with the State of Illinois would take less than like a million years!

The bad news is that the site is basically a big ole pile of rubble.  (As a side-note, I think the word “rubble” is seriously under-used and under-appreciated and I personally plan to use it every chance I get for a while.)  As Jessica described in her post about taking the soil test samples, there is only about 4 inches of dirt, then she hit rubble in every spot she sampled.  I know it’d be much easier if this site was pure rice dirt just waiting to be planted, but that’s usually not the reality of community gardens.  The idea is usually to take a spot that nobody wants and turn it into something beautiful for the community to enjoy and to create a place where folks who might not have the space to garden can grow their own food.  This is just that sort of space.  We’ll just use raised beds (which many people prefer, anyway) and plant right on top of the rubble.

Bonus good news: Jessica also finally received the results of the soil test and the lead levels were fine for planting.

So, moving forward, our new best friends are the folks over at the Park District of Forest Park.  They currently maintain the property and are very excited to work with us to make the Forest Park Community Garden a success.

Tonight was the recreation board meeting.  We found tons of great information about how to start a community garden on the American Community Garden Association website that we used for the presentation.

The recreation board is made up of volunteers from the community who maintain all the “pocket parks” in the area.  Each person is assigned a park and if something breaks at your park or your park is looking particularly crappy, you are responsible for reporting the problem and making sure that it gets fixed. I love that!

Our presentation went well.  Everyone was extremely supportive and it turns out that there used to be a community garden in this area back in the 70’s.  That was great news to hear because it means that this community has proven that it will support a community garden.  When the old garden was closed, it had over 260 plots which was over 100 plots more than when it first started.

After we discussed the idea and potential locations for the garden, we were asked to find more helpers and come back to the next meeting on the first Tuesday in July.

Thank you recreation board! We will be back!