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Future site of the Community Garden
Partnering with
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OUR COMMUNITY GARDEN
Holy Nativity Parish is in the process of creating a community garden. Together
with neighbors and other community organizations, we plan to "re-purpose" a
portion of our side lawn to create a functional garden.
In the largest portion, we will grow organic fruits and vegetables to benefit
the less fortunate members of our Los Angeles community. Fruit trees and
vegetable plants will pull dual duty, both decorating our church property and
providing sustenance for others. The food we grow will be donated to local food
banks and soup kitchens which feed disadvantaged families and homeless people.
| In another portion, we’ll grow – organically and on-site – the flowers we use
weekly for our events and services. “Non-organic flowers are grown with a
variety of fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, nematocides, and plant-growth
regulators.Nearly 70 percent of all flowers sold in the U.S. are imported,” per
Grist.org. Importing requires extensive
fossil fuels, invokes the human hardship of foreign wars, and
exacerbates global warming. |
Volunteers
come in all sizes to help prepare the ground for the Cutting Garden,
Phase 1 of the Community Garden Project |
The flowers we raise will enable us to remove our parish from these destructive
cycles.
Holy Nativity’s landscape is currently lawn and 40+ year old junipers. By
transforming this space into a functional garden, we will:
- actively help alleviate at least some small part of the suffering and
hardship of poverty (social justice);
- raise community awareness of social justice issues, environmental
issues, and issues of consumption (education and culture change);
- become a very visible example to the community of taking positive action
to make a difference (spiritual outreach);
- transform part of our city footprint from ornamental into functional use
(land use);
- take the water we once spent on our lawn and put it toward producing
food for people (water use);
- promote biodiversity and provide bird/beneficial insect habitat by
growing a wider variety of plants, including heirloom vegetables and
beneficial insect attractant flowers (creation care);
- reduce, in at least some small way, the impacts of conventional
agriculture and transportation of food and cut flowers (greenhouse gas
impacts, environmental care);
- create a focal point around which to rally the people of our local
community (community building).
We welcome your participation!
Donations are welcome, both financial and in-kind. We’ll need funds for
signage (to educate passers-by), fencing and irrigation re-work, rental
tools for the transformation, and more.
All volunteers are welcome – parishioners, Westchester residents, and the
Los Angeles community at large. We’ll need people to plan the garden, and to
solicit contributions of materials and fruit trees. We’ll need people to
plan, publicize and manage the groundbreaking events and celebrations.
And we’ll need volunteers for the work days, and people who wish to be part
of longer-term maintenance.
If you would like to be a part of the formation, planning, publicity,
creation or maintenance of this garden, please sign up for our email
newsletter and be sure to check the Community Garden option. You will receive
updates of activities and opportunities to get involved.
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