Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

Global Gratitude Gardens: Possible Evokation

The last few days I've been doing alot of work in my garden. We mapped it all out using Google Sketchup:

Whats not included in this sketch are my compost piles, the Chefs du Potager gardens along the top right section, the barn where we hold our workshops, or the propagation house. Still, I'm excited about how much we've mapped, and its all to scale and will be uploaded to Google Earth soon.

Tomorrow we're inviting dozens of community groups to the barn to discuss building around 24 community gardens across town. They're going to come every other week and design and build a garden here in the shape of the raincross (which is the upside down bell on the map above), and then the alternate weeks go back to their community location (a church, a school, a hospital) and design their own gardens.

Then next do the hardscape. First with us, then their location.

Then the irrigation, same learn and apply. Then the pathways and raised beds. Then planting. Then learn how to find local partners and identify volunteers and resources in their community. Then harvesting. Then replanting.

All in the learn, then apply style, where they'll be emboldened to do projects they would otherwise not have the spark or courage to undertake.

Plus they'll be networked to support each other, and there will be a complementary city-wide vegetable exchange they'll participate in that will also interface with local soup kitchens.

Its an ambitious plan, but we've worked on similar stuff in the past and are just trying to use all the assets the community already has. We've been asked to do this enough times, we figured its high time we embarked on a serious, integrated plan.

So wish us luck, we're also going to be submitting the Garden Mosaic with its Veggie Exchange, Resourceful Gardens, and Sustainable Hub to the city public utility, the state Strategic Growth Council, and the Metropolitan Water Agency.

I'm thinking of building on this idea for a possible Evokation. I'll contact a few of the agents currently working on food and food security, and discuss my ideas for Global Gratitude Gardens. If you're interested, send me a message.

Views: 70

Comment by Jan Lampe on March 26, 2010 at 11:30pm
good to see i inspired someone!
Comment by Thomas Pinkerton on March 26, 2010 at 11:35pm
Daniel: are you thinking of something more like a social network: digg, a wiki, etc. Or a directory like Yahoo's directory used to be -- or some combination of both? (Either way, Scout Report featured my own college's Ag Library's research guides today... might be of some use: http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/lib.php?lib_id=1)
Comment by Daniel LaLiberte on March 26, 2010 at 11:53pm
Not sure what it will end up as (that depends on who helps), but I was thinking something like a combination of social networking, with threaded discussions, blogs, wikis, events, etc, together with data tools, e.g. Google earth navigation, open data, visualizations, and yes, directories focused on all things related to gardening.
Comment by Nick Heyming on March 27, 2010 at 12:27am
Daniel, we're totally on the same page. Look at my more recent post and see the type of content we're looking to generate before the gardens get planted. The idea is that we have people around the world discover their heritage, and then connect to local gardeners and farmers with the purpose of safeguarding their wisdom and the seeds they carry.
Comment by Nick Heyming on March 27, 2010 at 12:27am
And all of those tools you're discussing would help ensure a stronger, more robust system.
Comment by Patricio Buenrostro-Gilhuys on March 27, 2010 at 1:01am
Daniel- Ursula is working on a very complete database http://www.urgentevoke.com/profiles/blogs/next-step-community-urban-2
Comment by Hayden Darrell Linder on March 27, 2010 at 1:23am
This is amazing work Agent Nick.
Earlier I thought someone asked about a time frame to completion but I didn't see an answer. Or maybe I'm wrong and no one asked. Either way, how long do you expect it to take before you're up and running?
Comment by Nick Heyming on March 27, 2010 at 10:19am
@Porlacarretera You'd be surprised, there are still people out there maintaining the ancestral lineages, some of them consciously, some of them by instinct. I've met quite a few in my travels, and hope to be one myself someday.

Just because what you may have experienced in a urban or suburban settings seems artificial and lacking in substance doesn't mean that there are no people maintaining tradition and growing stable lines of seed. They're everywhere, all around the globe. In my experience, they're saddened by the lack of respect and gratitude their children and grandchildren show when they become enamored with popular culture.

That popular culture originates in many ways from the mechanized Western world where I was born. I've witnessed firsthand the awful power of the industrialized juggernaut and the h***geneous broken cycle going from production to consumption to waste... but I also know too well the weaknesses of that system. In its vain attempts to suppress pests and weeds it encourages the strongest bugs that will eventually be its demise.

Instead of wringing our hands over the laborious task of euthanizing that (surprisingly recently conceived) dangerous, depressing beast, we should rather focus on the rich abundance that diverse, regenerative, nourishing systems have provided humans and other residents of this planet for millennia. By not insisting on plastic perfection, we can ally with untold fungal, plant, insect, bird, reptile, amphibian, and mammal friends, who've co-evolved with mankind for millions of years and are wondering why we forgot about them.

As much as huge multinationals would like to be able to exploit or wipe out competing heirloom seeds and heterogeneous, resilient systems, they're far too inherently strong and valuable to be kept at bay by shortsighted genetic tampering and fragile monocropping...

Mankind has grown that way since we started complementing a hunter gatherer diet with grains, fruit, vegetables, and herd animals. Its only in the last hundred or so years that we started using so much energy and literally mining the soil to exhaustion. Even if we salt the earth and mine the soil to its last bit of organic matter, nature will still find a way to grow weeds and bugs and fungus on it.

But why keep driving that sinking ship, when we can take a hint from our ancestors and grow in a way that leaves something delicious and beautiful behind for future generations?
Comment by Nicholas Nagao on March 27, 2010 at 1:06pm
+1 Spark for your comment if I could Nick, I'm tired of all the negativity. Keep it going man, you're one of the people that keeps me interested in this community.
Comment by Shakwei Mbindyo on March 27, 2010 at 1:57pm
+1 Courage. Good luck!

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