Thank you, Earth Month!
May is almost over, and almost all of the gardens have opened up for the season!
Keep up with what groundwork Milwaukee is doing is your neighborhood. at groundworkmke.org/getinvolved
New Garden Council serves as connector between gardeners, community and residents
This year Groundworks Milwaukee is adding a new resource for gardeners across the city. The Garden Council is a five-member group of veteran community leaders and gardeners. The council serves to give voice to community gardeners across the network and meets regularly to offer feedback and advice. The council aims to work and listen with community members and respond to concerns.
Dawn Powell
Dawn to Dusk Community Garden
Dawn Powell has been interested in gardening since she was 11 years old, delivering Sunday newspapers and noticing the plants and flowers in neighbor’s yards. She became a dedicated gardener in 2000 and since then has been deeply involved in the gardening network and community building organization. She was on the Milwaukee Food Council and has led numerous events and summits on food, gardening and community building. She specializes in vermiculture and manages four community gardens.
Q&A
Why gardening as a means to grow community?
Gardening is a way to get to know the community…your neighbors. We have to put the neighbor back into the neighborhood. If you know your neighbors for two to five blocks it is a more closely knit neighborhood. I have lived in my neighborhood since 1983 and you can learn from someone who is mature in age.
What do you grow in the garden and why?
I specialize in vermiculture and that's the controlled growing of worms in specialty structures. I have themed gardens, fruit and specialize in restoring gardens.
Trevis Hardman
Hardman’s Horticulturalists Scholar Society
Milwaukee native Trevis Hardman has been a lifelong gardener. He learned from his grandparents and as a kid always had raised beds, mulberry and apple trees. Hardman’s neighbors know him as a hard working man who picks up trash and takes care of his block. He is a cofounder of the well known “We Got This,” nonprofit that has mentored youth on the northside for a decade. Since co-founding the organization, Hardman says the police and crime rate in the neighborhood has dropped every year.
What do you love about your neighborhood?
We can unite on just causes, whether that be police brutality or coming together to grow food so the neighbors can eat. I also love the resolve that we have –within ourselves and within the community. I’ve seen situations that could have gone totally left but because of people like me and other leaders in the community those situations can be resolved easily without anyone getting harmed.
What is special about your garden?
Our new spot is the Hardman’s Horticulturalists Scholar Society at 4953 North 38th St., where we train young adults about anything having to do with gardens: canning, greenhouse and how to take care of produce properly. For 16 weeks we’ve been working with 8th graders at Frances Starms Discovery Learning Center and we’ve got about 26 plots started. It uses gardening combined with structured learning to really nurture and grow the students.
Katharine Goray
Solomon Community Temple Belonging Place
“I don’t feel grounded or at home without a garden. They bring hope – you don’t plant a garden unless there is hope.”
For Katharine Goray’s 72 years of life she has almost always had a garden. Whether that was as a young girl in rural Kenosha, a renter in Madison or recent transplant to Milwaukee. She said gardens make her feel at home and grounded, and that gardens spark hope.
Since moving to the city in 2021, Goray has been working with her congregation on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive to revitalize the Solomon Community Belonging Place. In less than two years the garden has grown from six beds to 17. It includes a rain garden, pollinator garden, healing spaces, library, paths and benches. And the produce grown in the garden supports dozens of people through the churches food pantry.
What has impressed you about the northside’s urban spaces?
One of the things that really impressed me about Milwaukee is going around and seeing the murals and pocket parks. The spaces where people can feel comfortable coming on to the grounds and reading or relaxing.
We named the garden at Solomon’s Community Belonging Place because we want people to feel like they belong on the grounds. We purposely put a path to connect public spaces like apartments or the bus stop to the garden so everyone feels welcome.
What do you grow in the garden and why?
All the food from the garden supports the food pantry. We surveyed people to see what items were most important to them. So now we grow okra, collards and green tomatoes. These are items that don’t come in from the Hunger Task Force or other donations to the food pantry.
Fidel Verdin
Summer of Peace Community Garden
One of Fidel Verdin’s skills as a leader is lifting up the voices of others. As the co-executive director of TRU Skool, a nonprofit organization that uses arts and Hip Hop Culture to educate and empower families, he says the garden leadership council goes beyond gardening. “Food systems and food security are super important in our environment. But this garden council can be a voice for the collective,” he said. “ Gardening and vacant lot projects – this is something people can visually see the value in. But there is a lot of thought of intention and hard work to make these spaces possible.”
What do you grow in the garden and why?
In our garden we like to say “We grow possibilities.” We are not a garden or a community space that is heavy on turning out produce. We don’t grow to take it to market or sell it. We give most of the stuff we grow away. We experiment in the garden to learn and expose young people to different herbs, plants and vegetables. We may try it and it fails but it is about learning and expanding what we think is possible.
Why gardening as a means to grow community?
For me, it is about place-making or place taking, and being able to do something productive with the vacancies in the community. It is about being able to activate and redesign how we use these spaces. It naturally just builds community because humans want to gather.
Shanice BaqueT
NIA Community Garden
Shanice Baquet says gardening has been her life. As a trained master herbalist she says that before over the counter prescriptions were available her ancestors used herbs as medicine. “For viruses, illnesses and sickness there is a plant that can be used as a cure,” she says. “But we as humans need to learn and understand how the items that are here growing from the ground, are here for us to use.” For Baquet the garden is an extension of support she hopes to offer her neighbors. She also founded Mommy Beautiful Sunrise, which is a resource hub for African American families in Milwaukee for all things child development.
How is Nia Community Garden used to build community?
Nia in Swahili means purpose. Before it became a garden it was just a vacant lot but we wanted it to have purpose and to show the community is cared about. We grow produce for our house challenged community, who can come pick out of the garden and eat fresh produce during the summertime. The garden is here to sustain everyone in the community and to bring about economic exchange within the 53206 zip code.
What does the garden grow?
We have fruit trees, vegetables and herbs. We grow some herbs and add a new herb each year. We work with different farms or gardens in the area that have an abundance of food and bring it in to support the ones that live in the community. We also offer community events like the annual pumpkin patch event. And it is a sensory sensitive garden for children and families with disabilities.
Thanks to the Garden Council, and every Garden Leader! We’ll see you outside.
One Quick Question:
How do those planters in the road work?
Those are also known as bioswales, and Ground Corps practices land and water management skills in maintaining bioswales all year long.
When it rains or snow melts, water from the street and sidewalks runs along the curb and into these planters and is filtered through plant roots, a special structural soil composed of sand and compost, and a layer of crushed stone. This filtering process removes suspended pollutants from the water and, therefore improves water quality.
After the stormwater is filtered through the layers, it drains into the existing storm sewer system on it’s way to Lincoln Creek. Pollutants from the street are left behind in the bioswale instead of flowing into the creek. This means cleaner water will flow to Lincoln Creek and ultimately into Lake Michigan.
