I am one of many volunteers in the grass roots, non-profit organization, Earth's Promise. This past year we created an organic community garden with the Ethiopian community of Beer Sheva, Israel. Our garden is called the "Building Strong Roots" community garden, located in the Gimmel Neighborhood of Beer Sheva.
We chose a neglected piece of land originally intended to be a park as the site for the garden. This instructable will showcase the steps we took to construct the garden. We hope this instructable will help anyone considering building a garden in your community. Please visit our website for more information.
Earth's PromiseA lot of time went into planning the garden. The biggest issue was location, location, location. We spent over 5 months searching out communities who would be interested in working with us. In the end we chose an absorption center who house new Ethiopian immigrants to Israel. It worked out well for us because most Ethiopians have agriculture experience, especially in the coffee fields. We actually ended up learning more about gardening from them.
Best regards from Brazil!
This is an excellent instructable because it covers the whole process from conception to fruition, with a focus on how problems got solved, ways to create partnerships and get community involvement. It's also written at the right level. Details of how to improve the soil, how to choose crops, how to build the beds and irrigation system, etc. are all somewhat dependent on local conditions, and going into them in detail here isn't really necessary. I think things like the decision-making process are a lot more universal, though, and having your description of that part of the "how" is very helpful.
We got our community involved by providing kitchen space to a group that harvests fruit and nuts from city residents trees, gives a third to the owner, a third to the volunteers and a third to the food bank. There was lots of fresh fruit and the rest went into mason jars at preserving parties at the church kitchen. We are still enjoying last summer's fruit in desserts served at our weekly free community lunch.
shoelace.ca