Community Garden Conference

This coming weekend, I'll be leading a Tallahassee delegation to the American Community Gardening Association (ACGA) annual conference in Atlanta, GA.  (Conference website for more details). Mark Tancig and Robbie Estevez, representing the Damayan Garden Project, Qasima P Boston (Project Food) and Joyce Brown (CANDI), both with ties to the Greater Frenchtown Revitalization Council, Merlin JnBaptiste, teacher at Astoria Park, and Thomas Lynch, a teacher at Riley Elementary will all be going.  The objective is a) for us to return inspired and equipped to be stronger community garden leaders and b) to build an inter organizational/institutional team to further the food movement here in Tallahassee.

The conference will cover a cross section of community garden topics (including one especially interesting workshop to me: Making More Gardens: Cooperation/Collaboration In Challenging Times: How typical non-profits, governments, businesses and congregations can find common ground to grow food, improve diets and support healthy neighborhoods-- hosted by a Portland, OR ecumenical group).  In addition to workshops, the conference will include tours to a select few of Atlanta's 250+ community gardens.  I hear three to four hundred practicing and aspiring community garden activists from across the country are registered.

I attended the ACGA's train-the-trainer event back in January, and I continue to draw on the folks I met, stories I heard, and information acquired.  I can only see great things fruiting in terms of our attendance to the ACGA annual conference, especially with the discussion of community gardens, urban farms, and other means of improving the Tallahassee food environment popping up ever more frequently around town.

Would you help support our trip?  I've paid for four of our six registrations, and anticipate footing a significant portion of our travel expenses as well.  If I were organized as a nonprofit, I would solicit donations, but that's not my business structure.  So here's what I wonder:  Would you be willing to purchase a $50 Food Garden Consultation Certificate for yourself or a friend to help fund our trip?  In so doing, you'll support the development of Tallahassee community garden leaders.

Here's how it works.
1) Using the Paypal button above, you purchase a Food Garden Consultation.
2) I send you a certificate.
3) We arrange a time for the consultation, and I stop in for an hour to advise and answer questions you may have about soils, sunlight, food garden placement and design, seasonally appropriate vegetables, regionally appropriate fruit trees, composting, etc.

My hope is to raise $500 through Food Garden Consultations.  That's ten certificates.  Please pass word if it's something you deem worthy of your endorsement.