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We will start the gardening season officially next month with our annual membership meeting, and hope you will join us. Mark your calendars for a meeting on February 21, 2012, 7:00 p.m. at Cottonwood Presbyterian Church. In preparation for the meeting we are seeking answers to the following questions:
We hope you will join us this year. We have made, and are still making, some smaller plots for people who just want to get their hands just “a little dirty.”
Reminder: We are always hoping for more kitchen scraps for our compost. Some things you may not think about composing are: egg shells, tea bags & coffee grounds, and canned foods which have expired usage dates on them.
A community garden is a place where people of many different backgrounds join together for the common goal of gardening. It is important to understand that gardening in a community garden is much different than gardening at home. A community garden is a shared space where we need to be considerate of other people and their plants. You will need to make the time to come to the garden – it won’t be as easy a stepping into your backyard. The following information may be useful to you if you are thinking about becoming a Community Gardener with the CPC SOUL Community Garden.
Time
As with any other part of life, the more time you invest in gardening, the better your garden plot will be. Below you will find a minimum estimate of what having a garden plot will require:
| Garden Task | SPRING | SUMMER | FALL |
| Weeding/Bed Preparation | 3 hours | 2 hours | 2 hours |
| Watering | 1 hour | 2 hours | 1 hour |
| Planting | 1.5 hours | .5 hour | .5 hour |
| Harvesting | .5 hour | 1 hour | 1 hour |
| Total Hours Per Week: | 6 hours/week | 5.5 hours/week | 4.5 hours/week |
Giving More to Your Garden
Community Gardeners are required to contribute during the season to tend common areas, do general garden maintenance, and attend Spring and Fall Garden Workdays. A community garden takes a lot of work to run well, and everyone is expected to participate. Some examples of common responsibilities are: maintaining pathways, fixing tools, and pruning trees and bushes.
Benefits and Rewards
Despite the extra responsibilities, community gardening is immensely popular in Salt Lake! If you’ve never gardened in a community garden before, you can look forward to more than fresh fruits and veggies. Cultural exchanges sprout and new friendships grow among diverse groups of people.
Community gardens are common ground for growing plants that feed, heal, and give aesthetic pleasure. They are civic spaces where people work and recreate to nourish themselves, their families and friends; the gardeners shared labor also builds a stronger sense of belonging to their physical environment and connection to other gardeners. Community gardens are the collective effort of people with the patience and determination to make things grow.
The gardeners in Salt Lake City are a remarkable mix of people from many backgrounds, so the gardens function as some of the most multicultural places in the city. Community garden spaces also allow for interaction with nature and the productive use of land. Because community gardens are beautiful and visually unique in an urban setting, they function as calming devices.
By choosing to be in a community garden, you’ll be gardening in close proximity to others. You can learn from these folks either actively (by asking questions) or passively (by observation). People of different cultural backgrounds garden differently; if your community garden is culturally diverse, you may be surprised at what you’ll learn even if you’ve been gardening many years.
Contact for questions or additional information: George Katz 801-272-5356
SOUL LABYRINTH – Jeremiah 6:16 – “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”
The garden behind the church has been enhanced with a prayer path called a Labyrinth. Unlike a maze, which has many paths and dead ends, a labyrinth has only one path leading from the outside to the center and back out again. The way in is finding awareness of the presence of God as we go through interior reality, past confusion and chaos of the daily word. Reaching the center, we find wholeness, completion through Christ, which is the heart and center of Christian life. Finally, the labyrinth offers a way out, a path of renewal as we come back into the world to continue our life’s work.
The labyrinth is meant to be walked pensively and prayerfully, in the spirit of guidance, peace, transformation, connection, inspiration, and hope.
Reprinted from the Courier August 2007. Thanks to several former members as well as Felicia Graves, George Katz, Nadine Geist McAlister, Janet Lake and Kelsey Schwab who helped with the construction.