Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
SEASONAL FUN: ACTIVITIES AND PROGRAMS
Each season brings its challenges and opportunities. The needs of the growing season naturally dictate
potential activities or programs, and during your busy building and planting season, there are lots of
reasons for people to be together in the garden. But as the garden slows down, the opportunities for
people to congregate and build community become less obvious, so you will want to be creative about
providing rationale and opportunities to get together. Local or national holidays can provide a back-
bone for events or celebrations. And the needs of the garden organization itself might provide fodder
for meetings or other gatherings.
Winter
Usually when you think of the start of the garden year, spring is the first season that comes to mind.
However, those long days of winter (at least in the north) are when gardeners start longing for sunnier
days that warm the soil, and all the fresh vegetables they will grow.
As seed catalogs start appearing in January, a funny thing happens. Even though your gardeners
know they have a finite amount of space, the imaginary garden expands and expands to accommodate
all the interesting seed varieties available in the catalogs. Inevitably, someone with a 4-by-8-foot plot
will have enough seeds for an acre farm. Plan a seed swap to bring the gardeners together to reconnect
and get their excitement going for the growing season ahead (and to deal with all that excess seed in-
ventory).
Seed swaps provide benefits and opportunities. Your gardeners have a chance to share seeds, garden
stories, and tips. To keep things economical and productive for participants of all income levels, seed
swaps provide a way to stock up on seeds at little or no cost. When gardeners reconnect after busy
winter holidays, there's the opportunity for more seasoned gardeners to take positions of leadership with
new gardeners, offering advice or other helpful tips. It is also another opportunity to recruit volunteers
and build excitement for the coming season.
Spring
Spring is a no-brainer for community involvement. Your building, planting, or education activities will
be abuzz with activity; if you have done a good job recruiting and advertising your community garden,
there will most likely be an abundance of help and interest. This busy season may not require any special
events or other activities, since the nature of the season will bring people together in the garden.
To maximize the positive energy, however, now is a good time to implement a recognition program
for volunteers. At Peterson Garden Project, we created a Volunteer of the Week program. You'll need
to determine the frequency of this recognition event for your garden—you can award a volunteer-of-
the-week, -month, or -season. We began by working with a local hardware store close to many of our
gardens. You can work with other local businesses to find suitable prizes—free gardening tools, pizza,
or ice cream, for example. Our partnership with the hardware store involved a free pair of work gloves
for the honored volunteer in exchange for the store name being mentioned every time we promoted Vo-
lunteer of the Week. The hardware store also offered a 10 percent discount to all of our gardeners. Over
time, we were also able to influence the garden products and brands the store offered; we talked them
into carrying open-pollinated seeds because of demand from our gardeners.
Summer
