ALICE'S GARDEN
21st & Garfield Streets

More than collard greens, lavendar, cosmos and all of the other hundreds of plant life that fed both bodies and spirits, have been growing at Alice's Garden this season.

An expanded, caring village of neighbors and community was rooted and nurtured in the Seedfolks Family Garden Program, bringing together 45 new families and 6 families from the 2008 season, for months of horticultural education, garden celebrations, and cultural & enviornmental re/awakening. An additional 32 families are on a waiting list for the 2010 season.

Three years ago when I was asked by my husband, Demetrius Brown (Milwaukee County Extension, 4-H & Youth Development Agent), to come back to the children's and family garden program "and work your magic" several folks, White and African American, told me I would never be able to get Black folks to garden again. In addition to the children's and family gardens, there are also rental plots offered through Milwaukee County Extension that has mainly served Hmong production farmers.

When the layered, rippling sound of laughter and conversation made me look up from a squash plot I was weeding one Tuesday evening in July, and I counted 72 African American grandmothers, fathers, uncles, daughters, cousins, siblings, foster children...tending to garden plots that were not available to them in years past, I could only wish those who doubted and discouraged my efforts could have been present to see the beauty of it all with their own eyes.

My first season back in the garden (2007), I focused on clearing out large areas of the garden that had been neglected, trashed or overlooked for quite some time...talking to the soil as I worked...promising new life, renewed respect & honor and new hands that would one day tend the soil again. Seedfolks also spent time re-establishing the children's programs at the garden, along with Milwaukee County 4-H and Youth Development.

The second year, I spent the off-season meeting with neighborhood churches, families, community organizations, inviting them to meet me in the garden in the spring! As the 2008 gardening season began, ten families took me up on that offer. As others saw the slow transformation of a small area of Alice's Garden, by the end of July, an additional 15 families were on a waiting list for plots and once the 2008 season had ended, that list had grown to 27 families. The 2008 Seedfolks Children's Garden Program repeatedly hosted 332 children from 15 community programs throughout the season with Yoga in the Garden, The Garden of Reading, and our Art in the Garden programs.

The journey we have taken together this season as a community gardening together has been a wonderful birthing of relationships, a rediscovering of culutral gardening and traditions rooted in peoples from long ago...an affirmation of a neighborhood and the people who live within. We have celebrated the birth of a baby, mourned the loss of a son, sat by hospital beds through a stroke and a heart attack, sent a daughter off to college, said goodbye to a gardener who moved backed to South Africa, struggled in and out of foster care, clapped at recitals and performances....We have made herb butters, grilled the harvest together, brewed herbal teas, saved seeds, canned our harvest, roasted our sunflower seeds, shared the harvest...The desire to grow our own food brings us to Alice's Garden. The village we have created that nourishes us in so many ways keeps us there.

On Saturday, October 17, we will close out the 2009 garden season a bit early to make way for the total transformation of Alice's Garden! Part of the Greater Johnsons Park Roots of Progress Campaign, through an agreement with The Center for Resilient Cities and Milwaukee County, and in partnership with more than 40 neighorhood, community, Milwauke County and City of Milwaukee agencies, the garden will begin a half million dollar rennovation project next month. Improvements include basic site work, a new garden design, a new black vinyl-covered fence, soil remediation, a central garden structure, storm drainage improvements, bike racks, benches, tool sheds, an art shed, built-in grills, picnic tables, new trash receptacles, signage, hoop structures, a new gateway and more.