[Sca-cooks] Community gardens

[Olwen the Odd]

> >> What is an "allotment garden"?
> >        It is a fine British tradition, the history of which I
> >know lamentably little, whereby significant areas within
> >a city boundary are give over to cultivation by residents,
> >each of whom has their own small plot within the large field.
> >I speculate that the practise goes back to the Industrial
> >Revolution, when people moving into the cities were given
> >land to cultivate as they would have had in the country,
> >to make up for the lack of gardens associated with the
> >city houses?
>
>. . . and, strangely enough, there was a variation of this
>in downtown DC, a couple of blocks from where my parents
>live. There was a plot of land on a corner owned by (I think)
>a Senator, who, for reasons known only to herself, offered it
>out to the local residents for purposes of gardening. For a number
>of years there were vegetables and flowers and nice plants
>growing on very nicely kept small plots on that land; eventually
><sigh> it was sold off, and two? three? cramped houses were
>put up in the garden's place.
>....but it was a nice thing to do, and brought a small piece of
>country to an incredibly urban landscape.
>
>Alban

Actually I used to have one of the spaces in a community garden in NW DC.
That's what folks call them in this neck of the woods.  Here in Baltimore I
work with a group called the Baltimore Tree Tribe.  We do lots of tree
plantings and offer free plastic 55 gallon drums cut in half and filled with
mulch to the community.  We also re-opened a rather large community garden
along the train tracks by the B&O Museum.  We work in complement with area
artists who do mural art and we landscape vacant lots after the artwork is
done.

Is anyone out there familiar with the "Gleening" program?  It's a program of
folks who go out in fields and orchards after the harvest and pick up what
is left.  That is then given over to soup kitchens and shelters.
Olwen

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