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New Community Gardens
Coordinator Begins Work
of Planting Seeds, Ideas
Early last month, the Athens Land Trust
announced that the non-profit had received a
three-year, $285,000 grant from the National
Institute for Food and Agriculture to set up
and maintain a mesh of community gardens
around Athens, part of the institute's mission
of strengthening local food systems in order
to fight hunger and food insecurity.
On Dec. 1, as the ALT celebrates the grand
opening of its flagship community garden at
the Athens Community Council on Aging, the
public will meet Athens' first community gar
den coordinator, Kate Austin, who will serve
as a liaison between citizens and local food
resources and marshal finances for the cre
ation and planting of community gardens.
A selection committee
composed of ALT board
members and potential
stakeholders in the local
food movement chose
Austin, a newly minted
UnTversity of Georgia
graduate, from a pool of 60
applicants. One can assume
that Austin's background in community build
ing, on top of her green-thumb education,
made her the preeminent candidate for the
job.
Shoring up Austin's garden coordinator
position is Daniella Adams, a recent UGA
horticulture grad who will labor part-time
to cover the bulk of the day-to-day, fingers-
in-the-dirt work as Austin rallies community
involvement.
Fresh off of an internship that brought her
to a Johnstown, PA neighborhood where she
organized a community garden on an unused
plot of private land under a billboard, Austin
returns to Athens having just earned a degree
in Landscape Architecture from UGA.
Austin's career began early last decade
as a community organizer in the Northeast,
followed by a stint at an Atlanta non-profit
law firm, which she soon left to continue her
education here in Athens, a place where she
thought she would never have the opportunity
to stay after graduation.
“I love Athens but didn't think I would get
to stay," Austin says. "There's a lot of com
petition. It's not so often positions like this
open up."
With only 27 communities receiving NIFA
funds, the grant places Athens alongside
award-wining projects like Milwaukee's urban
farming rockstars Growing Power and speaks
to Athens' extensive food advocacy and com
munity building assets, which fortify a poten
tially vibrant local food system. ‘
- With such an involved local food network—
including the Athens Farmers Market and
restaurants that highlight community-grown
produce on their menus—Athens is a very
special town, says Austin, and the acceptance
of EBT cards (an electronic version of food
stamps) at this year's farmers market indicates
a growing desire to improve access, both geo
graphically and economically, to local organic
food.
Clarke is one of the poorest counties in the
state, and Austin says that community gar
dens can improve access to
healthy food for Athenians
who can't afford to patron
ize farmers markets by
enabling them to grow
produce just outside their
front doors.
"A 600-square-foot gar
den is estimated to have
a gross return of $600," says Clarke County
extension agent Amanda Tedrow. "For a family
on a tight budget, I think savings of that size
will really add up and lead to more nutritious
and fresh food than they may have been able
to afford otherwise."
Improved access to free food isn't the only
benefit provided by neighborhood gardens,
according to Fred Conrad, community garden
coordinator at the Atlanta Community Food
Bank. Gardens build neighborhood leadership
as participants create and enforce bylaws and
cooperatively manage the property, and can
also help address issues related to vacant lots,
which can include illegal dumping and drug
dealing.
Austin cites Athens' six-year-old Brooklyn
Community Garden as the perfect example of
the crime-reducing capacities of such ven
tures. Some research based in Houston and
St Louis suggests this perception is borne
obt only by the anecdotal stories of residents
and is refuted by statistical analysis of crime
Improved access to
free food isn’t the only
benefit provided by
neighborhood gardens
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reports. But these studies also show, despite
the statistics, an improved sense of commu
nity. The studies may not indicate an overall
reduction in assaults or murders, but they do
show a drop in property crimes that certainly
boosts quality of life.
David Berle, the UGA horticulture profes
sor who served on the selection committee
for Austin's position and wrote the grant that
funded it, said in an interview earlier this
year that Athens boasts 20 community gar
dens in some stage of production. Berle and
his army of student volunteers will join local
food advocacy group P.L.A.C.E., Keep Athens-
Clarke County Beautiful and the county exten
sion agency's master gardeners, among other
groups, to facilitate further growth.
The key to a sustainable community garden
is building the site with as much community
involvement as possible. In an email, Conrad,
the Atlanta garden coordinator, wrote that "a
community garden should start with a group
of people. It never should be one person driv
ing the project In general, a small group of
people will mak» better decisions and tend to
attract others to them."
Austin adds that the success of her
Johnstown garden depended on neighbors
green-lighting all decisions, both landscape
and managerial a tactic that she says contrib
uted to the community's sense of ownership of
the project. "The easy part is the gardening,"
she says; community building—the door-to
door interaction with residents—is more dif
ficult, but just as gratifying.
As she built the Johnstown Community
Garden, Austin encountered criticism for
spending money which some locals considered
too much for a garden in a city steeped in
poverty. She understood these concerns; while
there are many examples of successful gardens
nationwide, it's hard for people to see the
possible benefits before they can see tangible
results. "It's an easy thing to criticize," she
says. "If you want to see results, get out and
help make it a reality."
Andrf Gallant
The ACCA garden kick-off begins at 4:30 p.m. on
Wednesday, Dec. 1. Visit Ragpoie.com to see a video
about building the garden.