If you are not a member of our listserve please sign up! Email communityfoodandgardennetwork-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

We started the meeting by introducing ourselves and giving a brief history our work with people with disabilities and/or gardening.

We explained the committee as a group of people that act as a steering committee to oversee the raised bed garden project at community gardens. It was made very clear that there is no time commitment necessary to be on this committee, and that physical labor was up to the individual participant.

This committee will help design the beds by deciding best materials, height and size of the garden beds.

The raised bed project requires sustainability. The boxes need to be built of materials that will hold up for at least 5-20 years. (The more years the better!) There always need to be gardeners using the beds.

This committee could decide to be active only as long as the raised beds are initially being built, or they could participate for years and years to come.

We all agreed that a lot could be improved upon with accessible gardening in Madison.

Beth and I passed out the work plan we created for raised beds. The plan includes putting beds into Atwood, St. Paul, Troy, Truax, Quann and Gammon Community Gardens.

The first bed we would like to get working on is Atwood. Because of its central location, and potential wheelchair accessibility this would be a good garden to get underway.

We toured the site and decided that a workday needs to be planned. Unfortunately we were not able to set a date.

The layout of this garden would include a one sided wheelchair accessible bed near the bike path, raised bed gardening on the other side of the bed, traditional ground gardening in the middle and a raised bed at the top. (I hope that makes sense for all of you that haven’t seen it!) If anyone is interested in looking at the potential site it is located at the east corner of Ohio and St. Paul, the second garden in. It has black plastic on the lower half and is being gardened on the upper half.

One exciting and unexpected result of the meeting is to plan a full day conference on accessible gardening in November. The plan for this conference includes a citywide tour that features accessible gardening and will be hosted by Focuscorp.

In attendance were:

Kris Kellor- she has a history with community organizing and is building an accessible garden at her house, currently enrolled in Master Gardener course, kskellor@...

Janet Chen- gardener, worked with Chicago community gardens, architect with knowledge of accessibility issues, janet@...

David Ballwin- degree in Botany, works with Wisconsin Council of the Blind, is blind himself, community gardener in raised bed at Reynolds, dave@...

Laurel Norris-gardener, in charge of raised bed project at Troy Community Gardens, laurelnorris@...

Ginger Ganson- works at United Cerebral Palsy, interested in helping people with disabilities garden, gingerg@...

Rick Brooks- UW-Health Promotion Project, Madison Home Garden Project, rbrooks@...

Ashleigh Ross - working with Community Action Coalition on raised bed garden project, growedibleflowers@...

Beth Holtzman- working with Community Action Coalition on raised bed garden project, mountainhuckleberry@...