Reynolds Homestead Community Garden
What? The Reynolds Homestead Community Garden (RHCG) is nestled on
a single lot on Madison‚s Near East Side, in the heart of the Old
Market Neighborhood. The garden is on a piece of property formerly
belonging to the Reynolds Family, hence the name Reynolds Homestead
Community Garden. The lot is 4,032 square feet, with approximately
2,430 square feet of gardening space broken into 27 garden plots,
including wheelchair accessible plots. Each plot is roughly 90
square feet (about 8 feet by about 11 feet). Each of the plots is
to be used by a different household, so this season we should have
about 27 households involved. We currently have a core of about 10
dedicated residents of the Old Market and Tenney-Lapham
neighborhoods planning, organizing, and physically improving the
garden.
Where? 634 East Mifflin Street, across Mifflin St. from the
Salvation Army parking lot.
Who? YOU!! Old Market Neighborhood is the home to the garden, and
Old Market Neighborhood residents are the target population for the
garden. Tenney-Lapham, Marquette, Capitol, and Langdon
Neighborhoods‚ residents all have secondary priority to the garden,
and other City of Madison Residents have the lowest priority. Our
goal is to create a neighborhood garden with neighborhood residents
growing vegetables and community in their own backyard! If you want
to garden at RHCG, you must be willing to garden your plot and take
part in running the garden by working as part of a team to maintain
the garden site, organize garden events, recruit gardeners, etc. If
you live in the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood, would like to grow
vegetable close to your home, and build connections with your
gardening neighbors, call David Long at The CAC Gardens Program
Today, 246-4730 ext. 218, or e-mail him at cac@inxpress.net (write "RHCG (gardens)" in the subject line).
Why? Madison's Isthmus has high population density, many low- and
moderate-income residents, many gardeners and community gardeners,
many beautiful shade trees, but virtually no community gardening
space!! The gardening community in Madison has long had the goal of
creating more community gardens on the Isthmus to serve the many
active and potential vegetable gardeners that reside here. The goal
is to allow folks to grow their food close to home˜currently, most
Isthmus Community gardeners need to go to Eagle Heights (West
Side/Campus) or Troy Drive (North Side) to garden. Though these are
both beautiful gardens, residents should not have to take an
hour-long round-trip bus-ride or bike-ride--or need to own a car--to
vegetable garden or belong to a community garden. You should be
able to do this in your own neighborhood, and now you can!
When? Garden start dates: We hope to have the garden growing by
the spring or summer of 2000. The land was procured for community
garden space nearly a year ago, but it took many months to work-out
a lease with the city that would sufficiently meet the needs of the
city, the gardeners, and non-gardening neighborhood residents.
The next meeting of RHCG Group is on Sunday, February 20th, 4:30
p.m. to 6:30 p.m., at 200 North Blount Street (back entrance off of
Dayton St.). We will be working on setting garden by-laws at this
meeting. If you are interested in the garden, call David Long at
The CAC Gardens Program today, 246-4730 ext. 218, or e-mail him at
cac@inxpress.net (write "RHCG (gardens)" in the subject line).
See you in the garden!