kihaku-gato:plantyhamchuk:Kirkwood Urban Forest - Goats and Schoolchildren - late 2012Our old commun

kihaku-gato:plantyhamchuk:Kirkwood Urban Forest - Goats and Schoolchildren - late 2012Our old community garden was part of a larger chunk of land, which has been variously dubbed an ‘urban forest’, a ‘forest preserve’, and anything else one could come up with. The land was originally owned by the state of Georgia (?), but was used as a dumping ground (we found part of an old ATM in there), and was overrun with aggressive, non-native invasive plant species. Kudzu, privet, morning glory, asian honeysuckle, english ivy, on and on.Due to some environmental agreement, the land was turned over to the City of Atlanta. In the middle of a budget crisis, the city had no interest in throwing any money to creating a new park, and left it to the neighborhood to deal with. No parking, no signs, no water for the garden… only two street lights that did get city electricity. It apparently wasn’t on internal city maps* - we once had a dramatic confrontation with the water department who was rolling in with huge equipment at night** - I jumped out in front of them to save the baby orchard as the city workers were totally bewildered to discover what we’d been up to. We helped them get to where they were going on foot, sans equipment, and even gave a worker a headlamp which they kept. The point of all this is that we had to get creative when managing this 5+ acre space with not much of a budget***, with only the barest help from the city.Fortunately, there was a nonprofit that helped to manage the city parks, and they were able to get us these goats to clear the aggressive, non-native species. Goats in the middle of a city were such a novelty that children from the nearby elementary school hiked down to see what it was all about. Neither the children, teachers, or the principal were aware that our place existed, but the kids enjoyed their brief time out of the classroom. Hopefully they have since visited again, the whole idea was to turn this no-man’s land into a positive place for the community, to help positively change the community’s relationship with their living environment. The steps in the last photo, V made those out of scrap/dumped concrete that was laying around, and he also grew the plants to raise the money to purchase the materials and made the bridge. Did I mention he’s awesome?*it is only on google maps b/c we kept reporting to google that there was an error in their mapping system.**Good thing we’re nocturnal gardeners! If we hadn’t been there (and I wasn’t willing to throw myself in front of a giant moving vehicle), they would’ve destroyed the orchard. These folks weren’t paid enough to care.***What we could raise ourselves from garden fees, the plant sale that V singlehandedly grew all the plants for, any grants we could get. The bridge in the picture has since been torn down due to a particularly nasty/racist neighbor, but it was created from the proceeds of said plant sales.“These folks weren’t paid enough to care” unfortunately when it comes to any construction workers of any kind, they rarely care regardless. My Hort professor/coordinator has had so many aggravations from valuable trees/plants getting slaughtered from careless maintenance/construction crews on campus. As my one prof said, they see plants not as anything more than obstacles that should be removed.I must say you guys are really doing a beautiful and lovely job. I hope people have become more aware of this project!Thank you kihaku-gato! We left Atlanta a few years ago to move up here to our crazy homesteading/food forest/agroecology project in the Southern Appalachian mountains, but we keep up with their goings-on. Currently they’re working on the bureaucratic side of creating a fully approved and permitted bridge with some local boy scouts - dealing with official channels mean it’ll take awhile.It was an interesting place to volunteer b/c the problems were complex. Many neighbors had to be talked into removing the aggressive/invasive kudzu in the area, many felt it created a curtain or physical barrier, protecting them from thieves. The cops heavily disagreed with this, saying that the thieves would just steal, scurry into the kudzu/overgrown forest, and never be seen again. By clearing out the woods and adding the bridge we were making things more open and safe for the community, but not everyone agreed. The most difficult part about community gardening is definitely the ‘community’ part. -- source link

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