Faith Matters Class at Knollwood Chooses Community Garden Project

The Faith Matters Class has chosen to create a raised bed community garden on the grounds of Knollwood Bapt. Church. We discussed ideas and then our facilitator Jeff Morgan suggested we go with this idea.
Lots of upfront planning needs to be done regarding the site, the tools, the materials needed to build the beds, the scheduling of work shifts, etc. I have volunteered to create a set of guidelines for our community garden. I will have these done by early December for the class to take a week or two to review. Then we can present the guidelines to the grounds committee for approval. In January, our class will meet on a Saturday to build the raised beds so they'll be ready for Spring.
We also need a volunteer who will then take this idea to various classes and groups in our church to sign up volunteer gardeners. I will supply you with a list of all the classes and contacts for each class.
For the guidelines, I'm following the ACGA (American Community Gardens Association) checklist:
http://communitygarden.org/learn/starting-a-community-garden.php#form

Heidi, I hope you will post your ideas on composting (has to do with turning piles of leaves throughout the fall and winter). Maybe we can all compost and use our own composted dirt to fill the beds with.

Please post any ideas you may have regarding this project. Thanks!


Here are some of the other service project ideas we discussed:
--Help provide materials and education to set up square foot gardens in trailer parks (this idea would be easy to do if some group would like to take it on. You could just set up a raised bed for one family as a start)
--Encourage farmer's markets to set up in impoverished areas
--help start a community garden at an impoverished school
--partner with impoverished church to set up a community garden on their grounds
--help to start an intergenerational/multi-organization community garden in vacant lots
--Research how to get the public behind the idea that every citizen has a right to healthy food