Garden update: May 2024
This has been a big month for the Mounds Park Community Garden. Here are a couple of highlights from a very eventful May:
We had our first spring clean-up and construction event
The water was turned on and fresh dirt was delivered
An army of gardeners has been transforming this space one plot at a time
We won another grant
Volunteer committees are taking shape and getting things done
We held our Grand Opening, Ribbon-Cutting ceremony, and May board meeting.
Read on for more information about the month’s highlights!
Spring clean-up and construction event
Even with loads of rain in the forecast and more work than we could hope to accomplish in one day, our community showed up for our Spring Clean-Up and Construction event.
Our goal for the event was simple:
Pick up trash
Cut and remove sod from individual plots
Clear the fenceline of brush and branches
Build garden boxes
While we didn’t have time to build garden boxes, our dedicated team of volunteers accomplished so much!
Cutting the sod took longer than I’d hoped. Our rental sod cutter was missing a cotter pin. Without the cotter pin, the rear wheel on the obscenely heavy machine kept falling off. I hobbled along as best I could with this miserable handicap.
Finally, with some electrical wire and a pair of pliers, we fashioned a collar that held the wheel in place.
While I was wrestling with the loathsome sod-cutter, other volunteers were busy tearing out the thick vines along the perimeter fence and backstop at the north end of the garden.
Our neighbor David scrambled to the top of the backstop to remove the out-of-reach vines. It was very impressive. He had a harness and everything, strapped in and giving those vines what-for. Dave isn’t even a member of the garden. He’s a neighbor who likes what we’re up to and has been generously willing to chip in (and risk his neck) to help us out. Thank you, David!
Same with our friends Amanda and Jordan who helped out picking up trash, removing vines, and laying out sod in the Northeast corner of the garden—what might eventually become a kid’s area with tables and chairs and vines growing overhead.
It’s truly amazing to see so many people willing to help, even those who don’t have plots in the garden. Everyone came together to make this event wildly successful! It felt immensely rewarding to see so much progress in one day (even if my back and leg muscles will never forgive me).
Thank you, volunteers!
Grand Opening and Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony
On Saturday, May 25th, gardeners and members of our community gathered for the official opening of the Mounds Park Community Garden. There was food, a booth from the Ramsery County Master Gardeners, music, and plenty of fun.
Of course, there was a raffle.
In support of our goal to contribute to food security in our neighborhood, Lea Dooley, one of our volunteer coordinators, scored four $25 gift certificates from Mississippi Market (shout out to Mississippi Market for their generosity!). We raffled these off. You didn’t have to be a garden member to enter, but you had to be present to win!
Attendees entered the raffle for the extraordinarily low price of adding their name and email address to the mailing list for the Dayton’s Bluff Community Council, (DBCC).
A supporter of the garden, the DBCC is trying to grow their mailing list. If you’d like to keep in touch with (or take part in) the goings-on in our district, add your name to the DBCC’s mailing list.
As is customary for ribbon-cutting ceremonies, someone needed to say a couple of words. These speeches are usually obscenely self-congratulating and tend to go on for much longer than anyone can stomach. Knowing this, I think I got our opening sentiments down to a cool, two-and-a-half minutes.
This is what I said:
I’d like to open with a land acknowledgment. Minnesota, or Mni Sota Makoce (pronounced mini sota mah-ko-che), is the homeland of the Dakota people, Anishinaabe, and other nations.
Mounds Park remains Indigenous land. This land acknowledgment is a step towards supporting Indigenous communities, and we stand in solidarity with Native nations.
Today we’re celebrating the grand opening of the Mounds Park Community Garden. I am immensely proud to stand with you all at the official beginning of this project.
After we cut this ribbon, and open these gates, you’ll find everything you expect to find in a community garden – plots, tools, vegetables, weeds, dirt. But there’s so much more going on here.
We’ve seen it in our board meetings. We’ve seen it at our first construction and clean-up event where a team of volunteers gave up a perfectly good Saturday morning to transform the landscape here. We’ve even seen it online where so many of you bring your enthusiasm for sharing gardening tips and notable events.
We will continue to discover what’s really going on here as volunteer committees continue to develop and take on a life of their own. As Ramsey County Master Gardeners come to deliver tutorials for people who want to learn more about gardening. As our forthcoming Autumn Harvest Festival becomes an annual Harvest Festival, or the Mounds Park Garden Finer Things Club meets for English Tea on the third Sunday of every month.
I made up that last part. But you get the point.
People are at their best when they’re doing good work. They’re even better when they’re doing that work together. And behind these gates, there’s more than enough work to go around. It has been heartening to see how, even in its infancy, the garden has brought people together, to work together, to help each other, and to learn from one another.
I want to thank the Dayton’s Bluff Community Council for supporting this project. I want to thank Stephanie Harr for her wise council in the early planning stages, and Jane Prince for helping secure the STAR grant and the first funding for the garden. Misty Burnette and Lea Dooley. I’d like to thank my wife, who is a very patient woman. I’d also like to thank the Saint Paul Parks Department who thankfully haven’t yet blocked my emails. And I want to thank you. You are the community in “community garden.” Thank you for your hard work and support We’re very lucky for it and we’re going to need it in the future.
Every good project has a tagline, and the motto for the Mounds Park Community Garden is, “If you love something, give it away.” I’ve never been more excited to give something away than this project. I can’t wait to literally step aside, cut this ribbon, and see what you all make of it.
And then, we cut that ribbon. The ribbon was actually a braid of vines from our backyard. A braid of vines was maybe a little on-the-nose, but elegantly fitting for the grand opening of a community garden.
A huge shout-out to Lea Dooley and Misty Burnette for helping to organize, gather supplies, and set up this event. Thank you to all the volunteers who contributed food, supplies, donuts and coffee, grilling expertise, and elbow grease in helping to make this a memorable event!
Gardeners are transforming Mounds Park
I’ve probably said it before but it bears repeating, it is stunning to witness this park turn into a garden and community gathering space. I’ve had the privilege of witnessing this transformation in real-time, watching the park turn from an overgrown patch of mud. This is what the space looked like just months ago:
Just imagine what this park will look like after the 2024 growing season!
To document our progress, I started a series of plot portraits with our members. This first round of photos will be the “before” shots of garden members in their freshly prepared spring plots. I hope to capture corresponding “after” shots in the late summer or early autumn of our gardeners and their plots in full bloom, just before harvest.
Below are plot portraits of some members. (I’ll add to this collection as I capture more shots in the future.)
A special thank you to our gardeners who graciously agreed to get their picture taken. Especially if they weren’t feeling particularly photogenic at the time.
A note to fiscal responsibility and grants
Finances for the Mounds Park Community Garden are being handled with the utmost care, attention to detail, and transparency. The Dayton’s Bluff Community Council is our fiscal agent. Our partnership guarantees oversight and reduces the risk of mistakes or improper handling of garden funds.
That means as expenses occur, our books are adjusted and receipts are documented to reflect an accurate running total of funds coming in and going out. As purchases are made, great care is taken to ensure we’re spending our budget wisely and frugally.
Fiscal responsibility is no joke. Transparency, accuracy, and oversight are paramount to eliminating one of the most easy-to-eliminate problems that could face this project. The seriousness with which garden administration regards finances is one reason this next part is such good news.
Before our Grand Opening and Ribbon-Cutting event, I posted on Facebook about a super secret surprise to be announced at the event. And at the event, I announced that we’d recently won a grant for funding.
The grant I applied for and won is called the People’s Garden Grant, sponsored by the USDA. Per their website, the People’s Garden connects gardens across the country that produce local food, practice sustainability, and bring people together in their community. People’s Gardens can take many different forms; they can include:
Food-producing gardens
Wildlife habitat
Conservation or beautification projects
Education and training spaces
Winning this grant provides some much-welcomed breathing room for unknown expenses like water and vandalism. But it also helps provide a clearer path to purchasing amenities for the garden, such as:
A garden shed
Supplies for a covered picnic area
Central Kiosk sign board
Garden supplies (hoses, tools, dirt, wheelbarrows, a weed whacker)
- Nate
Photos and video by
Lea Dooley, Nate Barber, Roxanne Sanchez, and Jaclyn Barber
