Strengthening Communities by Providing Access to Gardens in Every Neighborhood.
People like you make our work possible!
-
Expanding
We hope to put public access gardens within walking distance of every household in every community.
-
Educating
We plan to offer ongoing and seasonally appropriate garden education to support home and community gardening efforts.
-
Organizing
We plan to identify, train and organize local volunteers to help create and manage more community gardening efforts
WHY WE DO IT
At the Giving Gardens, we believe in a brighter future where everyone has access to the knowledge and resources that will allow them to live healthy, full lives and reestablish vital connections with the natural world.
For generations, people in our region took advantage of some of the world’s best soil and ample rainfall to raise, process and eat quality, local food.
Yet the land located within the limits of our small towns is mostly managed as lawns or not managed at all.
Today, nearly everyone is wholly dependent on foods trucked in from other parts of the world, and the knowledge and skills that were once taken for granted as part of our local heritage, have been largely lost.
In short, there is a great, untapped, potential to produce more of our food right here at home and to make our surroundings more beautiful and productive.
Our vision is a greener, more abundant, and more hopeful world.
Get Involved Today
ABOUT THE GIVING GARDENS
The Giving Gardens are places where all members of the community are welcome to enjoy, appreciate and harvest flowers, herbs, vegetables and berries. Empowering local people to garden for themselves, their families and their community.
The impact of the Giving Gardens on the neighbors and the neighborhood, on the people that visit and harvest from our gardens defies quantification. It’s the kind of thing that has to be told in pictures and stories because there is no easy way to tell the story in numbers.
At one level, the Giving Gardens have been a source of garden-fresh vegetables, herbs, and flowers for many people in the community during the last three summers. However, the real power and impact of the Giving Gardens goes well beyond what is produced there.
GIVING GARDENS PROVIDE
-
Access to organically managed vegetables, herbs, flowers, berries to all members of the community.
-
Welcoming, public spaces where people of all walks of life gather to harvest and appreciate the natural world.
-
Excellent habitat for our besieged local pollinators (birds and insects).
-
Live "model gardens" where people can observe how and when and what to grow locally adapted varieties and vegetable types.
GIVING GARDENS ARE
-
Inspirational
The gardens are one of the things that local people talk about during the summer. They are one of the things that makes Macomb special and unique. The Giving Gardens inspire people to think differently about their neighbors.
Our gardens are offerings to everyone, rich or poor, friend or stranger, red or blue without reservation and without barrier.
-
Educational
People of all ages and all levels of knowledge and experience learn from our Gardens.
Many people have never had access to a garden or harvested anything fresh.
On the other hand, even experienced gardeners get ideas and learn techniques by carefully observing our gardens and considering how we use them.
-
Transformational
Many people are inspired to garden on their own because of the Giving Gardens. Our hope is to eventually have solid programming that supports people’s own interests in gardening at home and in their neighborhood.
GIVING GARDENS LOCATIONS
First Presbyterian:
400 E Carroll St
Project Insight:
Corner of W Adams St & N Johnson St
Lincoln:
315 N Bonham St
(to the East of the school parking lot)
Mt. Calvary:
1500 E Pierce St
Eisenhower Tower:
322 W Piper St
(North of Eisenhower Tower)
Unitarian Universalist:
300 Wigwam Hollow Rd
CONTACT US
