Conclusion

While this is not exactly a comprehensive analysis of potential new community garden sites in Burlington, we hope that these maps, along with this blog will set up some structure for future classes as well as community garden planners to continue exploring these and other sites through out Burlington. Our conclusion about the sites that we looked at is that while each has several challenges towards creating community gardens in these areas, these challenges can be overcome depending on the time, support and of course finances available.

What We Learned

Before this project neither of us had been much involved in Community Gardens and so it was eye opening to see what goes into creating a new community garden as well as the time and effort it takes to keep a community garden going. We started out with a broad ranging proposal which we learned very quickly was well beyond what we were capable of in a short period of time. As we continued the project and consulted with Jessica Hyman we were able to narrow down our initial proposal and come up with some very concrete results both citywide and on the sites that we focused on. In retrospect it would have been nice if we had a few more weeks so that we could go to the communities surrounding these places and guage the level of interest and support towards these proposed sites. We would also try to improve communication with the general community and perhaps make more of an effort to get a greater amount of input from current and past community garden planners. In the end though we learned that while it may sometimes be difficult, it is very rewarding working with the community on a project which may very well have real effects on this community.

Potential New Community Gardens ArcGIS Map

Disscussion and Recommendations Old Landfill Site

The landfill site is a large area near a large population of people who have a need for community gardens. In this way it is the perfect site to place a new community garden. There are however several unique challenges which would come along with developing this site.

First of all the fact that this is an old landfill rules out the option of planting directly in the ground. This site is not contaminated to the point where people walking around on the surface would be at risk though. The solution that we propose to this problem is creating raised beds. This has been done in several other community garden sites in Burlington such as the Archibald St. Garden. This would make putting a garden in here more expensive but it would still be feasible.

The landfill site also has a large homeless camp in the adjacent site. Not involving the homeless population in putting in a garden here would make it very difficult to avoid conflict between gardeners and these people. We did some research on involving the homeless in Community gardens and it looks as though it has been done with success in several locations around the U.S. The specific example that we looked at was a homeless garden project in Santa Cruz, California. In this project 24 homeless gardeners were paid 6.75$ per hour (minimum wage) for 20-30 hours per week and ended up producing vegetables for local natural food stores, farmers markets, and local restaurants. This not only provided jobs but also "life skills for homeless people within the therapeutic context of an organic garden" (Starting a homeless garden). We do not propose such a large scale project but do think that this may have the potential to create a situation where both neighborhood gardeners and the homeless benefit. It could also be interesting for the city to look into this in order to get some of these homeless back into the workforce. For more information on this project go to the "Starting a Homeless Garden Project" website here http://www.nationalserviceresources.org/practices/17452.

Finally access has the potential to be a problem. Getting to this site requires a quarter mile walk down the bike path to reach it. Whether this is a problem depends on gardener's willingness to walk a little bit. This also may be difficult as far as putting in a water system. This problem is not unique to the landfill site though so perhaps coming up with a more broad ranging solution for getting water to these sites would be needed.

Discussion and Recommendations Riverwatch Site

We spent a fair bit of time at the green space next to Riverwatch Condominiums off of Riverside Avenue. This is another larger area with the potential to put in a number of garden sites. This spot is near a large condominium complex containing many people with little to no space to place they're own gardens. The area that we proposed as a garden site shares an area with a current dog park. Fortunately there is a small creek and retention pond which would separate the dog park from the area which we proposed. This creek would be cross able with a small footbridge. A GIS analysis of this site shows that it is not on prime agricultural soil. This site may require raised beds or brought in top soil to be most productive. Before considering putting in a garden site here it would be beneficial to talk to the managers of the riverside apartments as well as the general condominium population to see if there is interest in placing a community garden here. This location may also bring gardeners in conflict with dog park users which may also need to be resolved before placing the garden.

Disscussion and Recommendations City Wide

ArcGIS Layer of Potential New Community Gardens and Google Map- The cool thing about this GIS analysis is that it highlighted several of the current garden sites as well as potential new sites as being prime garden sites. There are also some flaws to this map however and while this map gives a guide as far as community gardening potential in Burlington, in order to determine specific sites ground sleuthing will be required. This map shows parcels which contain prime agricultural soils however it does not show exactly where these soils exist on parcels which may be useful for larger parcels as well as smaller parcels which contain very little agricultural soil. Most of the parcels selected (over 66 percent) are in their natural state which may make it difficult to put new community gardens in that area. Sites which are already in agricultural use may also not be feasible for new community garden sites. Future analyses may want to leave these out in order to get more accurate results. It must also be considered that community gardens do not necessarily have to be on prime agricultural soil in order to be feasible, however this map seeks to locate areas which would be easiest to place these gardens and so does not consider non-prime agricultural sites.

Results

Riverwatch Condominiums and Landfill Sites- Our hope is that with our disscussion and management recommendations for these two sites that community garden planners will get a better sense of the sites and perhaps have more information to make decisions about these sites in the future.

ArcGIS Layer of Potential New Community Garden Sites in Burlington- This analysis produced 436 parcels which are potential community garden sites.These included 49 parcels which were defined as parks, 91 parcels which were defined as having no structures or active use, 7 developed agricultural parcels and 289 parcels which are in their natural state.These parcels encompassed a total area of 179 acres.

Google Map- This map gives a visual representation of community gardens in burlington as well as some potential new garden sites.