TRAVERSE CITY -- -- Gardening brings a community together.
Author Eric Toensmeier, who calls himself a socially-engaged plant geek, brought together nearly 200 gardening enthusiasts Sunday during Traverse Area District Library's Live! @ the Library program, "The Promise of Gardens -- how gardens build community, feed us all and reconnect us to nature."
Toensmeier, the award-winning author of "Perennial Vegetables" and co-author of "Edible Forest Gardens Volumes I and II," has turned his own backyard into a model for urban gardening and worked with his community of Holyoke, Mass., to embrace the ideas of permaculture -- meeting human needs while increasing ecosystem health.
"This is about taking care of the earth, taking care of the people and sharing the resources that we have available," said Toensmeier, a longtime supporter of Holyoke's Tierra de Oportunidades, an urban farm project that started as a single community garden and now includes 10 community gardens and a 30-acre farm.
"The program took an ugly empty space in the city and turned it into a lovely, exciting place," said Toensmeier, of the gardens that replaced vacant lots filled with garbage, needles and the remains of demolished buildings.
Toensmeier shared the history and successes of the nearly 20-year-old grass-roots organization with neighborhood gardeners as well as representatives of community garden projects from Benzie, Leelanau, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Antrim, Wexford and Missaukee counties.
The Leelanau Community Garden, Traverse Area Children's Garden, Traverse City Community Garden, Grow Benzie! Community Green Space, Central Lake Gardening After School Project, Mancelona Community Garden, VEGGO - Volunteers Encouraging Garden Goods 4 Others, Garden of Grace and Wexford-Missauke Community Gardens have each found their niche in serving the needs of their community, with the help of countless volunteers.
"The most important thing is that the project be community-driven, based on the ideas and goals of the community," said Toensmeier, noting that Tierra de Oportunidades has incorporated a restaurant, greenhouse and commercial kitchen into their gardenspace, to meet the needs of the community.
Susan Kuschell, director of the long-established Traverse Area Children's Garden, said she was happy to see community gardeners coming together and sharing their ideas.
"Things never stay the same, you always have to be aware of the changes that people want to see," said Kuschell, who looks forward to the clay pizza oven that will be installed at the Children's Garden this spring as part of their Root to Mouth educational concept.
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