Field of Greens Overhaul

Summer is the season of momentum and movement. Urban Gleaners is at the mercy of great agents of change, but we are riding this tidal wave and turning it to our advantage. One of the great changes UG recently underwent was geographical! Our Field of Greens garden has moved locations; our old 200 square foot pilot garden has moved up and out to a new 1,800 square foot home.

This exciting shift started over a month ago at the Produce for People meeting, the first of the season. I went as an Urban Gleaners ambassador to plead my case in front of the produce for people garden managers. The initial goal was to make it on the short list of organizations that receive produce from the Portland Community Gardens. The city program, started in 1995, organizes community gardeners around issues of hunger and poverty. The goal was to glean all extra produce that gardeners couldn’t consume and donate it to agencies that feed the hungry. Enter Urban Gleaners stage left.

Urban Gleaners succeeded in our goal; currently two Produce for People gardens are donating their surplus produce to Urban Gleaners. Then the city gifted us something much bigger. Portland Parks and Recreation (PPR), the umbrella organization for Produce for People, bequeathed 1,800 square feet of underused community garden plots to Urban Gleaners. The Clarendon Community Garden is a relatively young garden and participation the first year was great! Then the garden started to experience some vegetal vandalism. Clarendon Garden sits on the campus of the old Clarendon Elementary School, which closed in 2006. PPR assumes the vandalism is directly related to the abandoned school site and the lack of previous community energy and presence in the area. Sadly, participation in the second year was down by 50%. PPR invited Urban Gleaners to fill the space and to create more positive foot traffic in the area. In essence we get free garden space for being anti-vandalism wards. We are happy to be bodyguards against green bullying.

Urban Gleaners has big plans for the garden space. We want not only to grow fresh produce to supplement our donations, but to create a garden model that will serve as an educational tool. Within the next two years we hope to populate the garden with young students learning the joys and benefits of food production. Though this project is in its nascent days, Urban Gleaners has big eyes looking forward.

Look here for amazing urban garden statistics that will lighten your heart!

Today we regularly receive food donations from Vestal and Adams Community Gardens. Produce donated to date totals over 50 lbs.