Indiana Community Garden
Overall Garden Evaluation: 2013 Season
I. Summary of 2013 accomplishments
A. Awards
• Welcome to Indiana 2013 Image Award
(Award given “for beautifying a prominent outdoor space in the Indiana vicinity”)
• PHS (Pennsylvania Horticulture Society) 2013 Community Greening Award
(Award given for “motivating people to improve the quality of life and create a sense of community through horticulture”)
B. New construction and planting
• Built 9 new raised beds, for a total of 24 beds
• Built 4 new compost bins, for a total of 6 bins
• Created a 4-barrel rain water collection system
• Completed gas well screening project
• Planted 15 disease-resistant apple trees of different varieties
• Planted 75 feet of mulched beds of Cempazuchitl (large marigolds indigenous to Mexico, used for the Day of the Dead celebration)
• Created mulched strawberry beds and smaller rhubarb bed
C. Activities in the garden
• Maintained low tunnel with greens and other cool season vegetables throughout colder months
• Community Building Day with IUP “Into the Streets” and many other volunteers, April 20
• Community Planting Day, June 1
• 3 yoga sessions: June, July and August
• Community service projects with students from various organizations
• IUP’s Upward Bound Math and Science Program
• IUP’s American Language Institute
• IUP’s African American Cultural Center
• IUP residence hall volunteers
• IUP Women’s Rugby Team
• Graystone Church Youth Group (while fasting as part of Project Famine)
• Indiana High School Key Club
• Educational programs for elementary or high school-aged groups
• Horace Mann School, kindergarten and 1st grade classes
• Horace Mann K-Kids (programs in both spring and fall)
• Justice Works (program for 16-18 years old aging out of the foster care system)
• Workshops on food and nutrition at ICG
• June 1
• July 13
• August 24
• Friends of the Parks Program, “Taste and Tour Indiana Community Garden,” July 27 (attended by more than 70 people in spite of a downpour at the end of the event)
• Catered dinner in the garden with chef Nick Karas from Nap’s Cucina Mia, October 4
• Constructed an ICG altar for the Day of the Dead celebration, October 31
• Fall community clean-up and garlic planting days, assisted by various IUP student organizations (SEEDS Club, IUP Women’s Rugby Team, IUP residence halls, and various other student volunteers)
D. Public relations
• New ICG blog created and maintained by Lisa McCann: indianacg.blogspot.com
• New website: www.indianacommunitygardens.org
• Articles and photos about ICG in various newspapers
• Member, Indiana County Tourist Bureau
• Interviews on WDAD radio program
• Regular updates posted in the Indiana Gazette
E. Community outreach and off-site educational programs about ICG
• Friends of the Parks program, “Grow Your Own Food, Inside and Out, All Year Long,” highlighting ICG’s work with cool season gardening in low tunnel, Penn State Extension Office, February 16
• Information booth at IUP’s Earth Day celebration, April
• Presentations about ICG to IUP Women’s Club, May 4
• Plant sale with Indiana County Master Gardeners at Indiana County Farmers Market, June 15
• Presentation about ICG to Indiana Rotary Club
• Information booth about ICG, including tasting samples of salsa prepared from ICG produce, at the Indiana County Farmers Market, September 28
• Information booth with hands-on educational activities at the Northern Appalachia Folk Festival, September 7
• Workshop on waste water management, including creating a rain barrel water collection system, at the Northern Appalachia Folk Festival, September 7
• Provided buckets and buckets of Cempazuchitl (Mexican marigolds) grown at ICG for IUP’s Day of the Dead events, late October
F. Community connections
• Indiana County Master Gardeners affiliated with Penn State Extension
• Indiana Garden Club
• Cozy Corner Restaurant
• Nap’s Cucina Mia Restaurant
• IUP
• Department of Food and Nutrition
• Anthropology Department
• American Language Institute
• Upward Bound Math and Science Program (a federally funded TRIO program)
• SEEDS Club
• Eco Club
• Various residence halls
• Friends of the Parks
• Indiana Arts Council
• Northern Appalachia Folk Festival
• Indiana County Conservation District
• Evergreen Conservancy
• Evergreen Garden Club
• Horace Mann School
• Visiting Nurses Association of Indiana County
• League of Women Voters of Indiana County
• Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank
• Numerous individuals and local businesses who have donated plants, seeds, straw bales, food, money, and other needed supplies to ICG
G. 2013 finances
• Income $6,526.05
• Expenditures $5,049.70
• Balance as of December 31 $1, 476.35
II. Projections for 2014
A. Winter 2014
• Maintain cool weather crops in low tunnel garden
• Fundraiser at the Artists Hand Gallery
• Support League of Women Voters of Indiana County grant proposal to LWVPA-CEF (Citizens Education Fund of the League of Women Voters) for a watershed education project, which would include ICG’s rain barrel water collection system
• Explore growing plants from local heirloom seeds at ICG in collaboration with proposed IUP seed bank
B. Spring 2014
• Construct raised beds around gas well
• Build additional tool shed storage on back of garden pavilion
• Build library unit inside garden pavilion
• Continue design of landscape integration project with Indiana Arts Council
• Select seeds from local sources for Planting Day
• Connect with local food banks and Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank
C. Spring/Summer 2014
• Establish a calendar of activities in the garden (workshops, tour, volunteer groups)
• Events already scheduled:
• Friends of the Parks Program: “Taste and Tour the Indiana Community Garden,” July 19
• Friends of the Parks Program: “Taste the Four Seasons of Home Grown Garden,” August 9
• Designate part of the community plot as a children’s educational garden sponsored by Indiana County Master Gardener Program
• Organize a volunteer pool to work in the garden throughout the season
• Work with local food banks
III. Long-terms goals
A. Continue to promote education on gardening, nutrition, cooking and sustainability through programs and activities at the garden
B. Strengthen connections with food outreach programs
C. Secure a permanent presence of the Indiana Community Garden within Indiana
D. Obtain community support and funding to create a part-time garden position for a garden coordinator
IV. Narratives
A. Chloe Drew: School Liaison
As the school liaison for the Community Garden, this past season we have worked with students from Indiana High School’s Key Club as well as with the K-Kids from Horace Mann and with the kindergarten and first grade classes at Horace Mann.
For Building Day this year, a group of high school students involved in the volunteer organization, Key Club, came and assisted with building new beds, digging exterior strawberry patches, and digging holes to plant the new apple trees.
Horace Mann’s volunteer organization, K-Kids, came early in the spring on Earth Day where students traveled through different educational stations in the garden. This was an after-school program for the students. Students worked and learned about compost, worms as composters, planted seeds using a square foot gardening method, planted plants that were donated by Frank’s Flowers, and ate a salad made of greens the children picked in the low tunnel where they had wintered over. Near the end of the school year, Horace Mann students created artistic signs to label some of the plants they put in the garden on Earth Day. After the K-Kids came to the garden, three classes of kindergarten and first graders came from Horace Mann, and again participated in various learning stations, some of which included planting the sunflowers and harvesting crops from our winter garden to use in a fresh salad made onsite. In the fall we invited the K-Kids back to the garden; however, due to weather we had to take the garden to the students. We incorporated some Day of the Dead festivities and information in our lesson for the students, since it coincided with what we were doing at the garden for the Day of the Dead celebration. Students participated in seed saving from vegetables picked from the garden, a compost relay game, creating a new worm bin, and “picking” vegetables to use for a salad that was made for the students. We taught students about how compost works, how some vegetables grow underground and we harvest the roots of those vegetables, and how to save seeds from various plants to reuse in the upcoming season.
In addition to working with students from the local schools, we also made a presence at IUP’s Earth Day Festival where we composted on site to take back to ICG’s compost, made awareness of the garden, collected memberships, and sold garden t-shirts as part of our fundraising. In the coming year, we expect more visits from K-Kids at Horace Mann, and we hope to make more connections with junior high and senior high school students through various extracurricular organizations such as Key Club or through science class field trips.
B. Jodie Seybold, MS, RD, LDN: Food and nutrition
During the 2013 year, I was part of the steering committee as well as the secretary for our meetings. I participated in an IUP student recruiting fair with Kay Snyder and Ola Kaniasty, in order to bring awareness to IUP students about the garden as well as to recruit student volunteers to help us with garden tasks. I have also redone our garden tri-fold poster, which has been displayed at many events. During the Northern Appalachia Folk Festival, I volunteered for a few hours at our table to further our efforts in raising awareness for the garden within the community. I helped build the rain barrel stand that the rain barrels sit on as well as helped construct the rain barrel system during our annual Building Day. During our clean-up weekend in October, I helped transplant strawberries and turned up the soil in the community beds.
My big role at ICG is to hold monthly food demonstrations at ICG, along with my colleague Nicole Dann. Since both Nicole and I are both Registered Dietitians, we have provided nutrition-based demonstrations. As faculty in IUP’s Department of Food and Nutrition, we have been preceptors for our dietetic interns who helped us with our garden food demos. I also had an undergraduate intern work with me during July and August in the garden. The intern and I developed two pamphlets that were displayed at the garden: Cool Summer Treats and Child-friendly Garden Nutrition, both of which related to the ICG. The intern and I also participated in the Friends of the Park sponsored program, Taste and Tour the Indiana Community Garden. We developed more handouts, a nutrition game, and I worked with Nap’s Cucina Mia and the Cozy Corner Café to donate food. Each restaurant provided me with the recipe that they made for that day and I created a recipe card with the Nutrition Information on the back of it for attendees.
During October and November, I worked with Lisa McCann, an IUP Anthropology student who has become very involved with ICG, to provide authentic food for her big event both at the garden and on IUP’s campus, Day of the Dead. Together with six of my department’s dietetic interns, we created three authentic recipes, with the support of the garden, that were served during the main event: Tamales, Atole, and Candied Pumpkin. I helped the interns create recipe cards for each dish with the nutrition information displayed on the back.
In the upcoming year, Nicole and I are holding an event at the garden sponsored by Friends of the Park, titled Taste the Four Seasons of a Home Grown Garden: From Planting to Preserving, on August 9th from 10 AM to Noon. We want the community to tour the four seasons with their taste buds at the Indiana Community Garden and learn the key times to plant, pick, and preserve produce while sampling nutritious recipes for a healthy lifestyle.
C. Kay Snyder, Volunteer Coordinator
ICG has achieved great success in its second year, being recognized with Welcome to Indiana’s 2013 Image Award and the PHS (Pennsylvania Horticulture Society) 2013 Community Greening Award. ICG’s accomplishments have required the help of teams of dedicated volunteers. On Building Day, for example, about 75 IUP students, Key Club members, and community residents braved unseasonably cold April temperatures to build nine new raised garden beds, haul two tons of garden soil, create an extensive mulched garden bed along the fence, construct a major gas well screen project, plant 15 disease-resistant apple trees, and build a four-barrel rain water collection system. At the Friends of the Parks program, “Taste and Tour the Indiana Community Garden,” ICG volunteers and plot owners joined with volunteers from local restaurants, Visiting Nurses of Indiana, Evergreen Conservancy, the Arts Council, and Indiana Master Gardeners to create a fun-filled learning experience for all.
Each educational program at the garden has involved assembling a knowledgeable team of volunteers to create a series hands-on learning activities that meet the needs of that particular group. When Justice Works wanted to bring teens aging out of the foster care system to ICG to learn about gardening, volunteers worked with the agency to create a program that would be interesting and empowering for the students in addition to providing pre- and post-test measures of the students’ performance as required by their funding sources. Even when high school and college students have come to ICG to do community service, ICG volunteers try to create a meaningful and fun learning experience for that particular group. The Graystone Youth Group who planted peas and radishes at ICG while they were fasting as part of Project Famine learned first-hand something about hunger and the importance of access to wholesome local food. Many groups doing community service at ICG have at the same time enjoyed sampling food from the garden, learning about various vegetables or insects they had not seen before, and gained deeper insight into composting or rain barrels from their first-hand experience using them.
Among the many individuals besides the ICG team who have volunteered at the garden this year, one deserves special mention. Lisa McCann, an IUP anthropology major who had originally had intended to do an internship at ICG before summer financial aid was cut, has continued to contribute to ICG in significant ways. She planned the entire Cempazuchitl project , which led to her planting Cempazuchitl seeds at home, transplanting them to the garden, mulching and composting the soil, and later harvesting buckets upon buckets of Cempazuchitl (Mexican marigold) for various events during IUP’s Day of the Dead festivities. Lisa has been photographing the garden since the beginning of the 2013 garden season, and has generously allowed us to use her superb photographs on our website (www.indianacommunitygardens.org). Lisa has also created and now maintains an ICG blog (indianacg.blogspot.com) that wonderfully documents ICG activities through photos and text.
D. Tom Nowak, Webmaster
The ICG website is now fully functional. The site allows us to post announcements, show slideshows demonstrating ICG activities, and make many reports available to the public. The site also has a calendar of activities. We also have a live “button” which allows the reader to donate to the garden using PayPal. Contact information for the ICG staff is also posted. All posts are archived by month. This allows the viewer to read about past activities and see past announcements. Viewers are permitted to comment on activities or aspects of the web site. The web site also links the reader to other organizations and websites which support and ICG and provide important information about gardening.
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