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| Sugarhouse Community Garden Director Heidi Spence, October 23rd, 2012 |
Sugarhouse gets a garden
Feeding families and the
community
Julianna Clay
Until University of Utah attendee for the master’s program Heidi
Spence submitted her proposal in, February of 2011, The Sugarhouse Community Garden was an abandoned pair of tennis courts. At the time Spence was taking a
gardening class at Wasatch Community Garden where she met another girl who
lived close by who had the same idea and together they drafted a second
proposal. From there it was only a matter of getting it approved by the board.
Since then with a grant from Wasatch Community Garden and
with the help of Lowe’s Home Improvement, and the community the garden now has
96 full sized plots and 10 half sized plots. In total 92 families garden at
Sugarhouse Community Garden. All of the plots are tended by the owners of each
bed.
One of the members of and owners of a plot Andrea Timberlake
explains and elaborates on her experience, “Community gardening has been
fun! It's been enjoyable working with my family to prepare the beds,
plant, weed, pick and finally share and eat. It's been instructive too,
to visit with other gardeners about their gardens, admire them and sometimes,
share. The abandoned tennis courts were transformed, brightening up the
bleak corner in Sugarhouse with flowers and other plants.”
Heidi Spence in addition to being the creator and director
of the garden also has her own bed. She says that the garden has a huge variety
and inventory of all sorts of plants, herbs, vegetables and fruits, “I alone
have 30 varieties of tomatoes and throughout the garden there are at least 40-50 varieties
of tomatoes. We also have strawberries, raspberries, lettuce, kale, broccoli,
sprouts, cabbage, chard, thyme, oregano, dill, fennel, watermelon, honeydew
melon, pumpkins, squash, and an edible flower called nasturtium.”
This year as well as being able to help feed the community
and their family members the garden also donated to St. Mark’s Millcreek, which
is subsidized housing for elderly people. They delivered about 30 lbs. to them
about three days a week all summer.
Wow that is really cool that they are donating food to the elderly. I was wondering if they need interns or volunteers to help with farming? After watching the film "urban gardening",I am a supporter of the urban gardening/organic movement. Good blog i would just like more info about how to get involved with the community garden.
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Comment by Joshua Moulton
ReplyDeleteI thought your blog post was very clear and concise. The title and sub title of your blog match perfectly with what you wrote about in the post. It was great that you were not only able to get a picture of Heidi Spence but the picture was at the actual garden. When I finished reading the post I thought of two questions that I wanted to know the answers to. What Heidi's initial goal/idea was for the garden before everything was finished? Also, did this community garden turn out to be everything that Heidi expected it to be?
what a great use of an abandoned area. i love hearing about communities coming together over a shared goal. food is something that we all need and relate to, so this seems like a wonderful project!
ReplyDeleteI liked the topic you decided on. I feel like all of the other topics that students chose are really similar and this idea is really unique. And it is really well written as well, great lead!
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