[Summit] Tot Lot redesign backstory

[Anthony Arrigo]

Just a few comments on how community gardens work:  

1. The city does not generate revenue from the garden. The city designates certain public lands (in Providence they happen to be in parks all over the city) as garden space, provides the initial infrastructure materials, and then the community uses that space to grow food.  The gardeners themselves do the rest of the work of building the beds, adding the soil, planting, watering, harvesting, cleaning up in the fall, etc., so it is a collective/cooperative community effort in that regard.

2. Yes, there is a nominal fee charged to gardeners (usually $25-$35 a year) that goes into a pool and is used for the maintenance and upkeep of the garden, compost deliveries, wheel burrows, tools, hoses, water usage, etc. -- all the things that are provided for you as a gardener that you don't have to schlep from your house every time you go to the garden.  Essentially, the space itself is free, you're just paying for the additional resources you're provided, and to help maintain the entire garden if you're a gardener there.

3. It is "open to all" (including disabled persons), the only limitation is the amount of space available.  Anyone who wants a plot can get one.  Once plots run out, then the waiting list starts (thus the need for more gardening space).

4. There is no real "contractual exclusivity" with a plot.  You don't own the land.  You're not "leasing" the land.  You have no "rights" to the space.  You are entering into a "moral" contract in that you agree to use the land for the purposes of growing food.  It's not illegal for someone to walk into the garden and roam around, or help themselves to some of your tomatoes.  It is, however, immoral and unethical to take what someone else worked to produce without asking them.

If you're philosophically opposed to public-private partnerships, generally, or specifically to how community gardens typically operate, that's fine.  You're entitled to your opinion.  There is, however, a long precedent for such activities, and there is a strong interest in community gardening in the city, and in the neighborhood.  Every community garden in the city has a waiting list, and I expect one in Summit will be the same way.  

You said yourself that you would not participate anyway, so this is all a mental exercise in the proper use of public lands.  So, if we can move on from the philosophical contretemps, the question here is where is the best place to put a garden.  It's my position that a garden/park is an optimal solution that benefits more people in the community than just a park, or just a garden, and that the Tot Lot, as proposed in the layout by the Parks Department and landscape designer, is an ideal location.  The other proposal raised is to put a garden in Lippitt park instead.  That's what we need to decide.

Anthony

p.s. Re: "Island of Misfit Toys": Bob McMahon said that part of the park upgrade would involve getting rid of all (or most) of the toys that are in the park.  I'm sure there can be some accommodation to leaving a few if that's what most people want, but I think the sheer volume of discarded toys there now is a little over the top and is an eyesore.  Someone left an infant bouncy seat thing there!  Who is going to put their infant in a bouncy seat left at the park?  I'm of the Malcolm Gladwell "broken windows" mindset when it comes to that stuff.  Once some junk is left around, everyone sees it as an invitation to drop off all their own junk and it just piles up.


On Sep 21, 2012, at 4:42 PM, John Bazik wrote:

> It's the exchange of money and contractual exclusivity that I object to.
> 
> If the community garden was actually open to all - free of charge - to
> till and harvest cooperatively, I think that'd be great, even though I
> would not participate.  Or if it was on private land, or land set aside
> for that purpose, that'd be fine, too.
> 
> John
------------
> But I reluctantly have to ask: how does a community garden benefit
> everyone?  It seems to me that it benefits only the city, which gets
> some revenue, and the people who lease plots, who get to grow produce
> and keep it.  Other park users lose 10% of their park.
> 
> Sorry, I just don't see it.