Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Gardens of Illinois Avenue

Here's a great idea to help the East Side, but it needs your vote to secure funding. And today's the last day to vote.


So vote here.

Now that we've got that taken care of, here's a description of the project from the Peace Mob Gardens Facebook page.
We have adopted a city block where every home has been burnt down, and would like to develop it into an orchard. The perimeter of the 4 acre parcel will be surrounded with a living fence of Grape Vines. Inside will be planted with various fruit trees that will be trained into giant Peace signs. 
Funds will be used to level the land, purchase supplies for forms for the "Peace Trees", living fence, and pathways. Remaining funds will purchase as many fruit trees, and supplies to grow vines as possible. If there is extra we will build raspberry, strawberry, and other fruit beds.

This project would be as a continuation of a project that already consists of a Community Garden currently feeding people and helping to build community in a long neglected portion of Flint Michigan's east side. In addition to providing food and a sense of community our community garden and related projects are also used to help demonstrate sustainable methods of urban living and teach science and environmental awareness to inner city youth.
Flint's problems can seem overwhelming, but small projects like this one can make a difference. No, this won't transform Flint's economy, but it's a start toward something better.


4 comments:

  1. Three cheers for these dirty hippies. Attempting to gentrify downtown takes no guts or imagination. Farming on the Eastside? I love it. '

    Local karate legend /Jackie King has a farm in Beecher.

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  2. michael westermanMay 29, 2012 at 9:20 PM

    just voted for it

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  3. The greening of Flint is a fantastic idea. Who will look after these trees and guard them against being destroyed? We live in an age (lets face it) in which tombstones get kicked over and arson attacks have greatly spiked.

    I've sent Mayor Walling my thoughts of planting trees and the benefits it would bring. Another idea is to plant certain trees which could be harvested every 7 years for wood chips which could in turn be used in paper production.

    Certain species need little area to grow since the do not have much of an outward stretching canopy and they can produce a rather high yeild of woodchip tonnage per acre. Plant 100 acres of these trees and harvest them every 7 years & replant and repeat. It wouldn't take much of a quantum leap to make this city into a big player in the paper production industry as a raw materials supplier.

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  4. great! but let the trees look like trees. this is 2012 and the 60's are over and flint isn't berkeley, etc. an orchard though, i LOVE the idea!

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Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.