South End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust
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The South End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust (SELROSLT) is a membership-supported, non-profit organization that owns, protects, and manages 16 community gardens and pocket parks in the South End and Lower Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It is a member of the American Community Gardening Association, the Boston Natural Areas Network, the Land Trust Alliance, and the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund.
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[edit] Mission
The South End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust works to acquire, own, improve, and maintain open space for community gardening and pocket parks in the South End and Lower Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston for the public benefit in perpetuity.
[edit] History
The Land Trust was established in 1991 with the intent to incorporate and protect eight established community gardens. The existing gardens were owned by a variety of institutions, none of them with long term legal protection. The legal incorporation as a non-profit organization with an elected board composed of neighbors created an entity that was able to partner with The Trust for Public Land to purchase the range of properties from a variety of owners, and set in place a process to use and care for the gardens in perpetuity. Many of the orignal eight gardens were primarily food producing, helping to augment the budgets of low and moderate-income urban families. Land Trust gardens continue to be places of food production, as well as gardeners growing ornamental plants.
Today SELROSLT holds and operates sixteen community gardens, gardened by approximately 600 gardeners, and accessible to their adjacent neighborhoods. Individual gardens have received awards from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the City of Boston, and Horticulture magazine. Three SELROSLT community gardens have been the subject of the nationally distributed WGBH-produced program The Victory Garden.
[edit] Membership
Membership is open to individuals and families living in the South End and Lower Roxbury. Each garden maintains a waiting list. Most individual community gardens have a membership committee which manages the waiting list, works with the garden's leadership committee, and helps orient new gardeners to the garden. Waiting periods vary by garden and there are no statistics available on wait time. Members pay an annual plot fee, and an additional Land Trust membership fee. Costs are moderate, and payable on a sliding fee. Members may vote at an annual meeting, participate on committees, and are required to maintain their plot in a clean and productive state.
[edit] Gardening
Plot sizes vary from a small 5' x 9' to larger 14' x 28.' Gardening members come from the immediately adjoining neighborhoods. Individual gardens vary greatly in what is grown and harvested. Located in two diverse urban neighborhoods, a wide variety of food, flowers and plant material is grown based somewhat on ethnicity, ancestry, or if a gardener is a recent immigrant, their home country. Land Trust rules allow individual garderns to grow whatever they choose in their plot as long as it is not grown for commercial sale. Most garderners grow a mix of vegetables and ornamentals. Many of the gardens operate a composting system to convert discarded plant material to soil and fertilizer. Roughly half of the gardens have perimeter borders termed community borders, which are planted with ornamental plants, flowers and small shrubs.
[edit] Funding and operations
The Land Trust operates with funds raised through garden plot fees, fundraising activites including the annual South End Garden Tour, and a Winter Lecture Series. Additional funds from private and public sources, via direct grants, have contributed over $1,000,000. Funds have been used to provide water systems, decontaminate soils, to install consistent iron fencing and granite curbing, and to build gazebo community spaces in the local gardens. The land trust has an ongoing capital development project based upon grant writing and proceeds from the annual South End Garden Tour.
[edit] Governance
Each of the community gardens elects or appoints a representative to the SELROSLT board. The board elects a president from membership. The president is a part-time position, focussed on day to day operations of the gardens, coordination with the City of Boston and membership. The individual community gardens send plot fees to the Land Trust to pay city property taxes, liability insurance, and water service. Individual gardens are intended to be democratically self-governing, and the form of governance varies from garden to garden. Some gardens elect a coordinator, or two coordinators; others elect a leadership group.
[edit] SELROSLT's 16 gardens and parks
- Berkeley Street Community Garden
- Bessie Barnes Memorial Park
- Bessie Barnes Memorial Garden
- Dartmouth Pocket Park
- Frederick Douglas Intergenerational Garden
- Lenox-Kendall Community Garden
- Northampton Community Garden
- Rutland-Washington Community Garden
- Rutland's Haven Community Garden
- Rutland Green Pocket Park
- Wellington Common Community Garden
- Wellington Green
- Warren-Clarendon Community Garden
- Worcester Community Garden
- West Springfield Community Garden
- Harrison Urban Garden (under construction)
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Landwehr Engle, Debra. Grace from the Garden: Changing the World One Garden at a Time. Rodale Books: 2003. ISBN 1-5795-4685-4.
- Schaye, Kim and Chris Losee. Stronger Than Dirt: How One Urban Couple Grew a Business, a Family, and a New Way of Life from the Ground Up. Three Rivers Press: 2003. ISBN 0-609-80975-X.
