I just attended a Community Garden Leaders gathering event that hosted by Calgary Horticulture Society last week. We shared experiences for success, challenges, advises with other community garden leaders.
It was very helpful and practical for me as a new leader. Some of the community gardens face some challenge issues like people didn't take responsibility that they promised. So, they have to set some kinds of rules/agreements...
After attending the event, most importantly, I realized how lucky I am. I have to thank all our gardeners that I didn't need to deal with those problems. As a lazy leader, I won't set any rules/agreements if I don't have to. I appreciated all of you did such a good job at your part. THANK YOU ALL!
As we will have a Sherwood Community Association meeting next week, and we have the Calendar Planning for 2018 topic in the meeting. I think I should get the garden plan for 2018 ready before the meeting. I was thinking I can process the planning on winter, but things happened not as we expected all the time. So, I made the plan as outlined below. I am open to any changes for suggestions and ideas. If you don't understand something or have any questions, let me know.
Cheers,
Kaitlyn
2018 Sherwood Community Garden plan:
Events:
April: Garden Opening - seeds exchange
September: Harvest Festival
October: Garden plots clean up for winter
Garden plots watering:
- All gardeners sign up for watering in a shared file calendar
- Water all the plots in the garden if you sign up to water for the day
- Maintaine the shared plot if needed
Weekly gardeners gathering:
- Gardener who watering the plots that day host this event
- All the gardeners take turns
- Allow gardeners work together in the garden
- Allow community neighbors drop by and ask questions
- Allow kids (all kids in the community) drop by to harvest/help with the shared plot produce
- A shared plot that plant with fruit, herbs, vegetable, or edible flowers
- Plants maybe are planted by ActivateYYC event (City event that we are applying)
Monthly topic workshop:
- Host once a month
- Open to all community neighbors
- Volunteer from our gardeners will host this event
- Topic will be picked by the volunteer (i.e. planting zucchini, pest control, pruning tomato…)
- Non-formal workshop
- Volunteer can just pick a topic and google it
- Share the information in the workshop
- It’s too much work to organize a workshop with a good qualification person for the cost and the size of the workshop
