Recently, Women and Girls Thriving received a grant from the Brookline Community Foundation to use the garden on their property. The garden has not been cared for the last couple of years so it is very overgrown. Just a couple weeks ago we started a garden group through Women and Girls Thriving to plan and run the garden. The goal of the garden is to grow healthy food, but also to build community and leadership. A portion of the food grown will also go to the Brookline Food Pantry.
Diagram of garden with post-its of ideas
We started by gathering a group of women who were interested in planning and organizing this community garden. So far we have held a couple of meetings to get to know each other and to start planning what we want to plant. Our list of plants so far contains, vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers. I also sent of a sample of the soil to UMass Amherst to check if the soil is safe (doesn’t contain lead or other heavy metals) and to see what amendments, if any, need to be made.
Most of the group that helped clean up the garden. (Photo Credit: Alison Moore)
The weather in Boston was so nice last week we were anxious to get out into the garden. So, we gathered the past 2 Saturday mornings to clean up the garden. Even in the first 2 short hours we made a lot of progress and the garden was already starting to look much better. We then met the next Saturday and finished most of the clean-up. The garden so far has been a lot of fun. Even on the first day we found some garlic growing and were able to plant it in one of the beds.
Image of garlic that we planted around the edge of one of the beds.
Our next steps are to amend the soil, get the beds repaired, and to start deciding on exactly what to plant.