Leaders Sought to Help Community Garden Project Grow

Wanted: A few good volunteers. Interest in gardening a bonus.

Make that a big bonus.

The City of Lakewood is looking to form a leadership team of four or five residents to help develop a community garden program.

Among the proposed ideas are a communal food-bank garden and individual plots.

The idea of a community garden has been in the works for some time, said Mary Dodsworth, director of Lakewood's Parks and Recreation Department.

“We have been talking about urban food supply and all the things going on in the world,” she said.

A science teacher at Clover Park High School used federal grant money during the 2010-11 school year to plant a garden of 16 raised beds in the school’s van-parking area.

“There are a lot of resources,” Dodsworth said. “The WSU extension program, Clover Park School District, Pierce College, Clover Park Technical College … We are just looking for that leadership team to help this project grow.

“We will help you and the school district will help you; we really need the group of people who is willing to put the model together to see what is best for our project and our site.”

Dodsworth said they are interested in looking at other cities’ models – “there’s no need to recreate the wheel, but there are a lot of great models out there” – and the trials and tribulations they have faced in creating them.

In Seattle, plans for a fire station on a community garden were met with “so much unrest that they had to find a new place for their fire station,” she said.

“Whether good or bad, people really embrace this as a project, they take ownership and they value it once it gets started.”

In order to get started in Lakewood, they need a place to plant the garden – and hopefully, one that comes with a partner of some sort.

“We’d need to have a partnership to make this happen,” Dodsworth said. “You know us bureaucracy people; we don’t do anything without paperwork.”

The leadership group would be tasked with supporting registration, posting rules and policy and helping to coordinate with the site.

“One of the problems is, when you have a community garden, where do you put it?” she said. “Every site is different – some want their (gardens) fenced, some want irrigation, some just want water access so they can irrigate themselves. Some may need to level the soil or make it more usable.

“It’s all based on what the needs are of the site and of the community.”

Dodsworth said the city and school district is in talks with Lakewood First Baptist Church about some property that could be “a great site.”

“They are really excited about this,” she said. “We were talking about shelters and (the pastor) mentioned he’s a gardener.”

First, the land must be secured and they must obtain formal permission from the current owner.

“You can’t go in and start working on someone else’s space,” Dodsworth said.

They already have some grant money to build it, but Dodsworth said that federal money always comes with the concern of it not being permanent.

“We don’t want to lose any of this grant money,” she said, “so hopefully we can purchase some supplies in advance.

Finances aside, though, they will not move forward until a leadership team is formed. Dodsworth said that the Clover Park Kiwanis has expressed interest, and she has received a few other phone calls.  

Those interested are invited to a meeting at 3 p.m. July 12 at Lakewood City Hall, Room 1E. The meeting will focus on a potential site and the next steps for the project.

While Dodsworth said this could be a long process, she is OK with that.

“You wouldn’t want it to happen tomorrow,” she said. “You want to make sure you thoughtfully planned it out and thought about it long term.”