The Forest Park Community Garden was mentioned quite extensively in a column by Stephanie Kuehnert in this weeks’ Forest Park Review.  You can read the column here . We’re always looking for ways to get the word out, and this sort of thing definitely helps that effort along.

If you read about us in today’s column and are checking out the website to see what we’ll all about- Welcome!  If you’re looking for more info about the garden or would like to get involved, just email us at fpcommunitygarden@gmail.com.  We look forward to hearing from you! 

Click here to read the article that appeared in the Review last July.

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.

I went to the park at Harlem and I-290 yesterday to take some soil samples.  We want to make sure there aren’t any toxic heavy metals in the soil that can sometimes be caused by car emissions or past land use on or near the site that would be harmful to us as we work in the soil or eat the food we grow.  To take the sample, I was supposed to dig down six inches in five different spots, gather dirt from each spot, mix it all together, and send it to central Illinois for a lead test.

What’s the problem, you ask?  The problem is, in four of the five holes I dug, the shovel hit gravel about four inches down.  We knew that there were homes in this spot prior to the expressway, so I can only assume that the gravel we’re hitting is the pulvariezed remains of those homes.

What does this mean for the garden?  Well, it means that in order to use this location at all–regardless of what the soil test tells us about soil toxicity–we will have to build raised beds with at least 12 inch high sides and we’ll have to buy clean topsoil and compost to fill them.  This could actually be really awesome.  Personally I like the look of raised beds as well as the control that starting with all new soil gives us.  A lot of the community gardens you can read about on Google use raised beds, so its not an uncommon practice.  Some of them even use raised beds over concrete to create gardens in abandoned parking lots so its definitely technically do-able.  However, raised beds and the soil to fill them will definitely add costs for us.  The beds should probably be built out of cedar boards, since it weathers well naturally and doesn’t contain any potentially harmful chemicals that treated wood or railroad ties can have.  But cedar is also pretty expensive.  And, of course, we’d also have to build the beds, which isn’t too hard in principal, but would be quite an undertaking at this large of a scale.  Building one bed in your backyard is pretty easy but building 50 beds could take a while.

So, we need to decide whether this discovery is going to mean that the Harlem / I-290 location wont work and start looking for another property.
What do you guys think?

Leave comments to this post and tell me what your feelings are.

Thanks for reading!

We had our second ever meeting last night, and although we had about half the number of people come as we did at our first meeting there was tons of energy and good ideas passed around. We met in what is currently our most preferred garden location. It was nice to be in the space. I’m sure its the most use the park has seen in, um, forever? hehe. Here are some pictures of the park (located on the northwest corner of the Harlem Ave. / I-290 interchange).

But, don’t get too excited quite yet. The land isn’t “ours”, and as we move forward in the process, not having a piece of land to use runs the risk of hindering progress toward that very goal.
Gina and I realized pretty early on that there was going to be a question about which should come first: raising the money to build the garden or securing a piece of land to use. How do we ask for money if we don’t know the details of the space we will be using such as soil conditions and availability of water and a fence? How do we convince people that we’re serious if we don’t have a space to point to? But, how do we convince the Village, the Park District, and all others involved that we’re really serious about this idea until we are able to demonstrate that we can really raise the money to pull this off? Which comes first, the money or the land?

After the meeting last night, I think we’ve decided that the answer is: the money should come first. Money is always one of the most important questions that comes up no matter who we’re talking to about the garden. How are we going to raise the money to do this? (Answer: We really have no idea and little other than a feeling that “things will work out somehow” to guide us.) How much money do we have? (Answer: Zero, negative actually if you count the money Gina and I have already spent out of our own pockets on the website, food for the first meeting, and other stuff I’ve already forgotten about.) Also, we are beginning to get the feeling that getting the land situation set is going to take a while. There will be red tape, lease agreements, governmental approval to get through. While all that is happening (most of it is out of our hands) why not spend our time and energy improving our financial situation?

So that’s what we’re doing, folks. At the meeting we came up with several ideas regarding funding sources. They include: fundraising events such as car washes, hot dog stands, and restaurant give-back days; soliciting money and in-kind donations (aka: garden supplies rather than money) from local landscape / garden businesses; and any grant program we can find. I left the meeting feeling very optimistic about the ideas we came up with and the level of energy the group has to put toward pursuing them. We’re also starting to get a more realistic hold on just how much this is all going to cost us.

We found out earlier this week that there is no water access at the park currently and that it will cost $5,000 to have water access installed. This sounded great, since we had been told that the dog park paid $13,000 for their water access. $5,000 seems like a steal, although it pretty much doubles our original budget. Other major spending items which may or may not be in our future include: clean soil and raised beds which would be necesary if the soil tests positive for lead (we’ll have those results in about three weeks); and the cost of a new, prettier and more secure fence, if we decide that the short rickety not-so-pretty fence that’s there right now wont work. We’ll also soon be registering as a nonprofit corporation which will make it a lot easier for us to accept donations and get a bank account and all that stuff.

Thanks to everyone who came to the meeting last night and brought such great energy and enthusiasm. About once I week I get overwhelmed and wonder if I have the time and energy to see this project through. However, all I have to do is meet up with some of my garden groupies and I feel all better again. I hope that the garden itself can serve a similar purpose for all of us once its up and running: give us a place to relax, get away from the stresses of everyday life, and recharge.

Thanks for reading.

Now that we made the local Forest Park newspaper, does this mean we’re famous? 

The Forest Park Review published an article in today’s paper about our efforts to garner support for the community garden.  I think Jessica and I both agree that we hate the picture.  The photographer that took it was really nice.  We asked him what we should do as far as posing and he informed us that we should just act like he’s not there.  We were like “dude, we would totally NOT be here if you hadn’t asked us to come!” Now that the article has hit the newspaper, we’re really hoping people will visit the website, take the survey and maybe even sign up to help with the garden. 

The Forest Park Review is a community newspaper published every Wednesday.  I love it because they only publish local interest articles.  I have no idea how many Forest Park residents read the newspaper, but I read it, and I don’t even read newspapers.  

Our next step is to set up another meeting to begin to develop strategies for planning and fundraising. 

We’re still looking for ways to get the word out and recruit new volunteers to help plan and fund-raise for the community garden so leave us a comment if you’ve got any good ideas.

Now that the first volunteer event has been planned, we needed to think about how to let people know about it. 

The flyers have been made and tomorrow we’ll be going door-to-door to some local businesses to ask them to allow us to put a sign in their window. 

We’ll also be taking pictures of the potential sites that have been mentioned so far.  Stay tuned, they’ll be posted here later.

The Brown Cow Ice Cream Parlor is the best place to be in Forest Park, hands down. They make a lot of the ice cream themselves and every flavor I’ve tried is spectacular.  The ice cream parlor has only been in business a few years but it is so popular (lines out the door in the winter time etc…) that they’ve already moved to a larger space. 

So, what better place to hold an event that you want to lure people to so that you can ask them to help with your community garden? That’s right! We are having the first community garden event at the Brown Cow. 

When I told my neighbors where the meeting was, they practically started booing me. Not booing me as in “bad place for a meeting” but booing as in “you low down dirty scoundrel you know that nobody will say no to a meeting at the Brown Cow!” What can I say, we are smart girls!

So, here’s the deal. Be at the Brown Cow Ice Cream Parlor on June 25th at 7:00 or you are not cool like us.

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!

This week I sort of feel like that crazy scientist from Back to the Future.

I can’t believe I just made the first contact yesterday and we are already headed to a board meeting. It just so happens that they meet the first Tuesday of every month and that would be tomorrow.

Not knowing how to go about contacting our local community government to discuss the community garden idea, I started by taking a look around their website.  I contacted our Commissioner of Public Property who invited us to the Recreation Board Meeting to present our community garden idea. 

So we’ve got 24 hours to prepare a presentation.  This should be interesting.