Please join us for an open house and community discussion about this exciting project!

WHEN| Saturday, June 5th, 2010, 2-5 pm
WHERE| Friends Meeting of Austin 3701 East Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.

Learn about the project | Give your input | Get involved!

For more information, please contact SFC at 236-0074 ext. 110 or visit www.communitygardensaustin.org/?page_id=496

Tour Materials
-New! Download and Print the Community Garden Map and Information Guide to help you find your way on May 1st.
-View Tour Postcard

View Austin Community Garden Tour, Saturday May 1st 2010 in a larger map

Participating gardens and events

• Alamo Community Garden: Acoustic music performance, vermicomposting workshop, garden tour
• Blackshear Community Garden: Garden tours, rainwater collection demonstration, fresh food and beverages for guests to enjoy
• Clarksville Garden: Popsicles and lemonade, garden dig-in
• Deep Eddy Community Garden: Work day refreshments, guided tour with history of the garden
• Deloney Street Community Garden: Work day, garden tours
• Festival Beach Community Garden: Garden tours
• Homewood Heights Community Garden: Work day with HoHi gardeners, workshop on building a Mandala Style Garden, and growing organically, sustainably, and locally. Refreshments and and seasonal, fresh garden treats
• Reagan High School Community Garden: Games such as balloon races, May Day celebration with May Pole
• South Austin Community Garden: Garden tours
• Sunshine Community Gardens: Tours of garden and chicken coop, lemonade and cookies. Visitors are welcomed to bring their lunches to picnic at Sunshine’s tables, restrooms on site
• Windsor Park Community Garden: Garden tours and decorate our fence. A group from Architects for Humanity and a UT architecture class designed a wooden fence made of empty frames that could be completed by community members using found objects. Come by and add something to it! We’ll have materials and tools for you to use.

FENCE ME IN

Thanks for your interest in the Fence Me In design competition! We’re excited to see your ideas and hope that this competition will lead to fun and beautiful fences not just at the Festival Beach site but around Austin.  For Festival Beach site photos and more information, see the link to your left. For the full site plan view this PDF file. 

We are looking for practical design solutions as well as the wild, wonderful and utterly unbuildable. Deadline is October 15^th at 5pm. Entries can be sent electronically (pdf or jpg) to festivalbeachgarden@gmail.com or mailed to Festival Beach Garden c/o 1200 Garden Street, Austin, TX 78702. Entries will be judged by a panel made up of representatives from the Festival Beach community garden and neighborhood, Austin Parks and Recreation, Sustainable Food Center, a local landscape architecture firm and a local arts organization. All entries will be displayed online and at the Festival Beach Garden kick-off party (date TBD). And the winning design(s) will be built by a great team of volunteers at the new Festival Beach Community Garden!

Design guidelines:

We are looking for a “kit of parts” fence that can be made to be as long or as short as we need it and that includes:

• permanent, durable perimeter fencing
• a truck gate (8’ minimum clear opening, lockable)
• a pedestrian gate (3’ minimum clear opening, lockable)
• seating, shade, signage and plantings can be incorporated
• Easy to construct with low-skilled labor (you and me)
• Not too spendy (low-cost — salvaged, recycled, donated materials ideal)
• Keeps the vegetables in and would-be invaders out (suggested height is 6’)
• Lasts forever (or at least ten years) with no or low maintenance
• And delights the neighbors!

Submission guidelines:

Please include the following:

o Cover sheet: Designer’s name, email and phone number

· Title of project

· List of materials per 5 foot section

o Drawings: Drawings of each section of the fence (fence, pedestrian gate and truck gate), including how the fence will stay up

o Details: Close-up drawings of the way pieces are connected to each other

Questions?

Email festivalbeachgarden@gmail.com or call 512 917 8688. Thanks!

The document may be found at: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/parks/communitygardens.htm

Comments regarding this document shall be sent to: pardcommunitygardens@ci.austin.tx.us

The undersigned organizations and supporters are requesting your support for community gardening in Austin.

Community and home gardens are an essential part of a vibrant, livable, and sustainable city. They offer space where residents can grow their own food, thereby reducing the use of fossil fuels and the amount of pollution emitted as a result of transporting food great distances. Community gardens also allow those that live in apartments or have a shady yard to grow fresh, healthy food.  Community gardens help to unite neighborhoods, contribute to neighborhood beautification, and connect urban dwellers with nature. They facilitate communication, foster intergenerational and cross-cultural connections, encourage physical activity and provide therapeutic benefits. The impact of these spaces is immeasurable and invaluable.

The number of community gardens in Austin is small compared to other cities of similar size: Austin currently has only 19 community gardens , compared to 68 in Seattle  and 200 in Boston . In order to promote the development of new community gardens and to preserve and enhance existing community gardens, we believe that the City of Austin should adopt the following policy initiatives:

•    amend the City code to support the development of community gardens and allow a community garden anywhere in the City of Austin to be designated a Qualified Community Garden (see attached for recommended changes to City code Chapter 8-4, 25, and others);

•    streamline the process to establish community gardens on public property;

•    designate a single-point of contact amongst city staff for community gardens (this could be the same person who supports the Sustainable Food Policy Board);

•    provide assistance or incentives to neighborhood groups that establish community gardens with respect to liability insurance coverage, the installation of water infrastructure and fencing, and water rates;

•    include food security in the scope of work for Austin’s new Comprehensive Plan;

•    ensure that area community gardens are represented on the newly formed City and County Sustainable Food Policy Board;

•    amend the City code to provide tax breaks and other incentives to private property owners whose property is used as a community garden;

•    ensure community gardens are an allowable use in every zoning category and setbacks;

•    include plans for composting centers at neighborhood and community gardens in the Austin Zero Waste Plan.

Thank you in advance for your continued support of community gardening in Austin.  We will be contacting you in the next two months in order to further discuss these issues.

Sincerely,

Coalition of Austin Community Gardens
Sustainable Food Center
Austin Parks Foundation
Sunshine Community Garden   
Blackshear Community Garden   
South Austin Community Garden
El Jardin Alegre Community Garden
Alamo Community Garden
Clarksville Community Garden
Good Soil Community Garden
Deep Eddy Community Garden
Windsor Park Community Garden
Homewood Heights Community Garden

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rJtIbVne0jaQADgUWf67Htw

Anyone can edit the spreadhsheet, so please feel free to update or modify information about your community garden as necessary. Thanks for your contributions!

If you have not yet joined the CACG Google group, you’re invited to do so–just send an email requesting to be added to:

coalition-of-austin-community-gardens+subscribe@googlegroups.com
 
Google will send you a confirmation email shortly afterward.

If you would like to add anything, or if you would like to change any information about your garden, please email Sari at sari@sustainablefoodcenter.org, or call me at 236-0074 ext. 110. Thanks!

TELL PARD TO SUPPORT COMMUNITY GARDENS

After months of strategizing, the opportunity to tell the City of Austin to support community gardens is here.  The Austin Parks and Recreation Department is seeking input about its Long Range Plan for Land, Facilities and Programs, 2010-2015.  Let Austin PARD know that you want it to support community gardens by sending your comments to longrangeplan@ci.austin.tx.us. 

Use the sample message below or write your own.  Just be sure to submit your comments by April 30, 2009.

I would like to commend the Austin Parks and Recreation Department on its recognition of community gardens as a growing trend in Austin (PARD Long Range Plan, p. 176).  PARD has shown great initiative in devising guidelines for community gardens in parks.  I urge the PARD to continue this momentum by keeping the recommendation to provide additional land for community gardens and farmers’ markets (Ch. 10) and by including a recommendation to adopt the draft Austin Parks and Recreation Community Garden Information Packet (Appendix Ch. 6 Supporting Documents Public Meetings) in the Long Range Plan for Land, Facilities and Programs, 2010-2015.  I also request that PARD incorporate community gardens as an activity or special use in Ch. 2 PARD Definitions and Standards; include Deep Eddy Community Garden when discussing existing facilities in Planning Area 2 in Ch. 3 Existing Facilities; continue to consider community gardens in planning for park and trail development; and, work with other city departments to increase their support of community gardens as well.

Thank you for your support of community gardens in Austin!

Sincerely,

To read the Austin Parks and Recreation Department Long Range Plan for Land, Facilities, and Programs, visit: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/parks/longrangeplan.htm.  To comment, send an email to longrangeplan@ci.austin.tx.us before April 30, 2009

January , 2009

The undersigned organizations and supporters are requesting your support for community gardening in Austin.

Community and home gardens are an essential part of a vibrant, livable, and sustainable city. They offer space where residents can grow their own food, thereby reducing the use of fossil fuels and the amount of pollution emitted as a result of transporting food great distances. Community gardens also allow those that live in apartments or have a shady yard to grow fresh, healthy food. Community gardens help to unite neighborhoods, contribute to neighborhood beautification, and connect urban dwellers with nature. They facilitate communication, foster intergenerational and cross-cultural connections, encourage physical activity and provide therapeutic benefits. The impact of these spaces is immeasurable and invaluable.

The number of community gardens in Austin is small compared to other cities of similar size. The high cost of starting a community garden, limited financial assistance, and few to no incentives for sustaining a garden on private property combined with development pressures are putting community gardens in Austin in jeopardy. Therefore, we believe that the City of Austin should adopt several policy initiatives to promote the development of new community gardens and to preserve and enhance existing community gardens as follows:

· rewrite the City code to support the development of community gardens and allow a community garden anywhere in the City of Austin be designated a Qualified Community Garden (see attached for recommended changes to City code Chapter 8-4, 25, and others);

· streamline the process to establish community gardens on public property;

· designate a single-point of contact amongst city staff for community gardens (this could be the same person who supports the Sustainable Food Policy Board);

· ensure that area community gardens are represented on the newly formed City and County Sustainable Food Policy Board;

· provide assistance or incentives to neighborhood groups that establish community gardens with respect to liability insurance coverage, the installation of water infrastructure and fencing, and water rates;

· amend the City code to provide tax breaks and other incentives to private property owners whose property is used as a community garden;

· ensure community gardens are an allowable use in every zoning category and setbacks;

· include plans for composting centers at neighborhood and community gardens in the Austin Zero Waste Plan.

Thank you in advance for your continued support of community gardening in Austin. We will be contacting you in the next two months in order to further discuss these issues.

Sincerely,

Coalition of Austin Community Gardens
Sustainable Food Center
Austin Parks Foundation
Sunshine Community Garden
Blackshear Community Garden
South Austin Community Garden
El Jardin Alegre Community Garden
Alamo Community Garden
Clarksville Community Garden
Good Soil Community Garden
Deep Eddy Community Garden
Windsor Park Community Garden
Homewood Heights Community Garden