Editors
Note: In January John received the 1st Annual Barbara Vedder
Community Participation Award.
Following are the remarks he gave in accepting the award at TLNA’s
Winter Potluck.
Hi neighbors,
When
Richard Linster told me I was getting this award, my first reaction was
“I am not worthy!” We talked a bit and I decided it would probably
be tacky to argue the point too strenuously. But I know there are a lot of
people who help make our neighborhood a good place to live and to all of you
here tonight or elsewhere, my deep thanks.
Like many
of you, I was exposed to gardening for food crops as a young boy in the gardens
that my father kept in Wauwatosa and central Illinois. Back then, I absolutely
hated gardening. I mean the hot weather, hoeing, weeding, picking bush beans,
which I really didn’t like to eat anyway. It was awful! Maybe I needed my
own space, but years later, with my own plot, I found that gardening could
actually be rather enjoyable. And now I find it one of the great ironies of my
life, that something so awful then could become a source of so much pleasure
and satisfaction.
Lauren and
I moved to Sidney Street nearly twenty-one years ago. I tried gardening in our
backyard. In fact I’m still trying to garden in our backyard. As most of
you know there’s not a lot of difference between the soil in our yards
and Tenney Beach. Nor was a garden really compatible with four kids, a swing
set, various four-legged pets, soccer balls and basketballs, tent sites and all
the rest. And anyway, our house casts too much shadow for the needs of food
crops.
Which is
how I got to community gardening. The nearest available plot was on Troy Drive
near Mendota State Hospital, and this spring will be my 16th as a
gardener there. What had been a buffer zone of the hospital grounds is now a
32-acre community-owned resource park, including community gardens, a CSA farm
and a co-housing project. My Troy experience led to work with the Madison
Coalition of Community Gardeners, and from that to the city’s advisory
committee on community gardens. I remain chair of its successor, the
city’s advisory committee on community gardens, which serves to protect
and promote community gardens in Madison.
As I was
thinking about what I would say here tonight, it occurred to me that this event
has a lot in common with community gardens. We are people with a sense of
caring for and belonging to a specific place. Food, recreation, and
community—perhaps even an element of spirituality—are all here.
With its
density and continuing development, Madison—especially its central
neighborhoods—has been a difficult place to build and sustain community
gardens. But sometimes I think the greatest obstacle to community gardening
isn’t so much the scarcity of space as it is our lack of
imagination—our failure to recognize the productive potential of what we
have.
I know that
our plots grow more than food for our physical well being. They nourish our
sense of place and community. They exist within the fabric of the city’s
political climate, its process of land-use decision-making and the car culture.
They’re about nutrition, clean water, and healthy soils. Our gardens are
a link to anyone who has ever worked the earth for their food—some of
them, perhaps, from our own past. And frequently, they exist within a community
of gardeners from different cultures, races, and traditions, of different ages
and levels of income.
It’s
a remarkable neighborhood.
Thanks to
my family for their support and to all of you here for sharing this evening
with me.
John Bell