FAYETTEVILLE — A community garden can sprout in your backyard. OK, maybe it doesn’t have to be that close, but a neighborhood plot is possible and organizers want to spread the word.
“We’re encouraging people to develop some garden groups,” said Lisa Netherland, a horticulturist for the Fayetteville Parks and Recreation Division, who also leads the Fayetteville Community Garden Coalition, a nonprofit corporation formed in January 2009.
The coalition will host a workshop Saturday at the Fayetteville Senior Activity and Wellness Center to connect residents who want to start a community garden. Workshop leaders will work through the various questions and concerns residents might have, she added.
The Fayetteville Parks and Recreation Division will donate a quarter-acre plot of space in Walker Park to be used as a garden for the surrounding neighborhood. The garden coalition will assist in organizing gardeners and help them work through some of the logistics of preparing and maintaining the garden plots.
“We hope that a Walker Park garden group will come out of this workshop — a group of neighbors who can take over the effort of starting and sustaining the Walker Park garden,” said Katy Deaton, an AmeriCorps volunteer working with the National Center for Appropriate Technology’s Fayetteville office. The center is a 30-year-old nonprofit organization dedicated to community development through sustainable food production and energy efficiency.
Netherland reiterated the gardens belong to the community of growers and ultimately will succeed or fail in their hands.
“We’re not building a community garden,” Netherland stressed. “Our goal is to get neighbors to interact with each other at the workshop and explore what assets everyone can contribute.”
Garden organizers say without true ownership in the plots by residents, community gardens do not generally succeed.
“A garden that is built by outsiders is a lot weaker, a lot less likely to succeed and sustain itself, than a garden that is started by the community who will tend it,” Deaton said. “The gardeners must be invested in all phases of the garden — planning, organizing, delegating, etc.”
Neighborhoods such as Walker Park and the nearby Jennings Plus community are particularly targeted for Saturday’s workshop, if only because they’re both close to Walker Park. And closeness also counts toward success, Deaton says.
“A community garden requires lots of watchful folks to keep it tended to,” said Alan Ostner, president of the Jennings Plus Neighborhood Association and a local landscape architect. Jennings Plus has a community garden at the corner of Fifth Street and Block Avenue. The garden is sponsored by the College Avenue Baptist Church.
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MEETING INFORMATION
The ABCDs of Creating Community Gardens That Last Workshop
When: 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday
Where: Fayetteville Senior Activity and Wellness Center, 945 S. College Ave.