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Our Garden in the Middle of the Street

Posted at 5:30 PM on July 3, 2008 by Leslie Allen (3 Comments)

My passion for local food is not limited to my personal life. I am fortunate to work as a horticulturist for University of Nevada Cooperative Extension where I get to teach the community about growing vegetables. Most of the time I do this by teaching classes and writing articles for the Reno Gazette Journal and Nevada Home magazine. Recently, however, I was lucky enough to design and install (with the help of some awesome volunteers) a community garden.

Our community garden is a little different as it is, quite literally, in the middle of the street. I came up with this crazy idea over lunch with Karen Craig, the woman is who responsible for developing Reno's West Street Market. As we were walking around the site of the new market I mentioned how uninspiring the existing landscape in the median strip was and how cool it would be if it were replanted with vegetables. This immediately appealed to Karen because the West Street Market will host a new farmers' market and year-round facilities for local food purveyors. We floated the idea up our respective chains of command and about a month later we had a signed agreement between the City of Reno and University of Nevada!

I still can't believe something this innovative was approved! Reno has such a reputation for being resistant to change and quite happy to do things as we always done them, thank you very much. So getting approval to put a vegetable garden in the middle of the street was really quite exciting!

I marshaled a bunch of Permaculture enthusiasts and university student volunteers, and we set to work installing the garden. Then the most amazing thing happened. Residents from the high-rise condos came down to help! They were so excited that a vegetable garden was going in just outside their front door. We created quite a buzz amongst passers-by, and before we knew it the media showed up! What a success!

The garden has been in almost a week now, and I am pleased to report that nothing has died or been lost to vandalism. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred. A local tomato lover has taken the initiative to stake all of the tomatoes! Someone made beautiful homemade stakes out of cottonwood branches and tied the tomatoes to them. I have no idea who did it, and I love it! This is exactly what I was hoping for, that the residents (or homeless folks) would take ownership of the garden. Obviously someone who walks along West Street is looking forward to homegrown tomatoes!

Perhaps our garden will inspire others to plant vegetables in places they never previously considered? Rooftop gardening is all the rage, why not median strip and sidewalk gardening? Why should lovely homegrown vegetables be discreetly tucked away in the remote corner of the backyard? I say bring 'em out! Let's plant our vegetables gardens for all to see! If you want to see our urban garden, come to the West Street Market on July 9th for a tour. We will be celebrating the opening night of Wednesday EcoNights at the West Street Market!

Comments (3)

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Hi Leslie -

What a great thing! I read about this move to take over vacant lands in our urban area in the LA Times back in May - here is a Link to the article. Here in Boise, there are lots of little strips of land that could certainly be transformed into urban garden plots - of course there is the traffic issue while working on it. I also wonder how much of the auto emissions that are emitted are absorbed into the foods? But still, we need to convince our neighbors, local governments and voters that these plots hold great promise to aid in our efforts to bring food closer to home. Nice posting!

Posted by Scott | July 5, 2008 4:23 AM

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This is an exciting area for exploration. I heard recently that a local man who worked here in RockIsland Il for years in community developement and has gone to new places to work in the past few years is now heading an effort in Detroit MI to facilitate the use of vacent lots in the urban invironment for vegitable gardening and that this is a city supported effort with discussion going on about possibly covering some opf the spaces for year around use. I don' have any contact info at this time but hope to learn more soon. I have wondered for several years now if some kind of programs could work to supply local food pantries. I am of the impession that at this time most of them focus on non perishably foodstuffs. So many possibilities for change and possibly a little optimisum.

mike

Posted by Mike | July 6, 2008 8:37 PM

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Leslie, once again, I say you rock! Veggie gardens in urban waste spaces are such a simple and brilliant idea; I'm so glad you are doing this in Reno. I hope this concept catches on as people realize how much potentially valuable growing space is wasted in urban and suburban environments in this country. (My husband likes to advocate the growing of corn in all the medians of the nation's highways. Hello ethanol!) Thanks for doing good works...happy local eating,
Autumn

Posted by Autumn Long | July 8, 2008 6:44 AM