ELLENVILLE
GARDEN VILLAGE:
PROJECT VISION
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| Ellenville Summer Sunset © Steve Aaron Photography |
The broad intention of the "Ellenville Garden Village" project is to improve the holistic well-being of a Hudson Valley village and its residents through collaborative participation in community-based horticultural initiatives.
Any lasting success the project may have will lie in its simplistic appeal to people of all backgrounds and ages in connecting with nature and growing natural food. It is intended that the "Ellenville Garden Village" project will help to establish synergistic partnerships in and beyond Ellenville, in order that mutual regenerative objectives may be achieved. In maintaining a flexible, open-minded approach to collaboratively regenerating the village economically, socially, culturally and environmentally, one may only speculate as to the interesting directions in which this project may develop. However, our vision focuses upon a two-fold aim: (i) to turn neglected plots of land into aesthetically-cultivated gardens to provide fresh organic vegetables for needy people and to lift village morale; and (ii) to establish a re-launched farmers’ market as a well-supported community focus for improving the local economy and the social and cultural heritage of Ellenville, and to enhance the quality of life of local families through nutrition education and the promotion of organic and naturally grown foods.
Community Vegetable Gardens
Project coordinator John Clark received approval in 2015 to turn an unused plot of land belonging to Praise Dominion Family Worship Center, Ellenville, into an organic vegetable garden. John now manages a volunteer program every year at this garden, supplying freshly-harvested vegetables for Praise Dominion’s food pantry. The vision to reproduce the Praise Dominion template at other sites in and around Ellenville gave rise to the "Ellenville Garden Village" project, now creating or revitalizing one new organic vegetable garden per year.
A key project partnership was developed through 2015 with Cornell Cooperative Extension (Ulster County), as John's horticultural and teaching abilities were assessed at the Praise Dominion garden, and valuable guidance and support was given to John regarding planning and development of an effective community gardens project. Encouraged by all elements of the "Ellenville Garden Village" project, the Community Horticulture department of Cornell Cooperative Extension has become a strong advocate for our community-building work in Ellenville.
Cornell Cooperative Extension perfectly summarizes the purpose of this element of our project's work:
"Community gardens foster a greater sense of community, promote health, and provide nutritious local produce to garden participants and community members in need. Community gardens also provide a place of beauty for everyone to enjoy as well as educational opportunities for the community to learn about growing food."
It may prove at a future date that the vision of the "Ellenville Garden Village" project would best be realized by adopting the legal structure of a nonprofit, when articles of incorporation would require a stated project mission. At the present time, however, our community vegetable gardens program is running less formally, conscious of the seven benefits identified by Cornell Cooperative Extension, as refined to meet Ellenville's specific needs.
1. Educate members of the community in sustainable gardening practices
Education will remain central to any vision of the "Ellenville Garden Village" project, as people of all ages and physical abilities are encouraged to learn the skills required to grow healthy food, according to the sustainable practices of organic gardening. Our project coordinator, John Clark, brings to this program a strong professional background as an educator, having worked for many years as a University Professor (adults), vocational trainer (teenagers), and supervisor of horticultural projects for nonprofits (people of all ages and physical abilities).
Volunteers with minimal horticultural experience find their confidence greatly benefiting from the guidance of experienced and knowledgeable gardeners. We therefore welcome experienced local gardeners to help the community vegetable gardens program by volunteering with us in Ellenville as teachers and mentors.
Youth education program: Ellenville Central School District
Hands-on horticultural projects are being designed for classroom studies, and young people are earning school Community Service credits under John’s supervision at the Praise Dominion garden. More than learning how to cultivate vegetables, young participants in this project receive a balanced, holistic learning experience as they are introduced to natural food production and organic philosophy. This horticultural program encourages young people in personal development of life skills such as leadership, planning ahead, patience, initiative, earning one's rewards, taking responsibility, being reliable to complete tasks to the best of one's ability and according to deadlines, and building friendships through a true appreciation that “we accomplished this together”. We aim to develop our partnership with Ellenville Central School District, placing teenage volunteers at several community vegetable gardens, and linking organic cultivation with a school environmental awareness initiative. It is further intended that a summer camp partnership will be established with Ellenville-Wawarsing Youth Commission.
Summer Youth Employment Program: Ulster Works
Ulster County Department of Social Services is unable to place unemployed people with the “Ellenville Garden Village” project for work experience or work training. However, when we are a registered nonprofit authorized to partner with New York’s Workforce Development System we intend to collaborate annually with Ulster Works, through their Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), in placing people ages 14-20 as paid horticultural trainees in the Ellenville community gardens program. The SYEP is a valuable resource, designed to provide work experience, work readiness skills, and positive work attitudes.
Adult education program: Organic Vegetable Gardening
Partnering from 2019 with Ellenville's Green Certified restaurant, Aroma Thyme Bistro, the "Ellenville Garden Village" project is running a new program for adults who would like to learn more about Organic Vegetable Gardening. The 8-week program, hosted by Aroma Thyme Bistro on Monday evenings (March, April, May) and including meals at the restaurant, will provide students with confidence to design and cultivate a home organic vegetable garden, choosing appropriate varieties and planning for harvest. For details of this program and how to reserve a place on the 2019 course (limited to 12 students) see this blog’s “TEACHING” page (LINK).
2. Bring people together with land through gardening
People have an instinctive connection with nature, and simply having access to green space and natural areas is important for facilitating activities that are beneficial for human well-being. Interacting with nature can deliver psychological well-being, cognitive, physiological, social, tangible and spiritual benefits (increased inspiration and feelings of connectedness to a broader reality). Together, these types of benefits also positively influence how people value natural environments by inspiring a broader responsibility for the natural world.
Connecting younger people with nature
As society revolves increasingly around a culture of transience and immediacy, it is a key vision of this program to provide a practical means by which our young people may gain a healthy respect for the traditional approach to life. For many children whose living situations lack access to gardening spaces, community gardens offer the first, and perhaps only chance to get close enough to nature, by digging into the soil and watching a plant grow, to learn an appreciation for food origins and nutrition. Establishing this connection with nature at an early age is important, as participation in gardening during childhood influences adult environmental attitudes and actions.
Connecting older adults and people with special needs with nature
Having produced field itineraries enabling people with physical disabilities to study geology and environmental science at university, John has the desire and the professional experience for setting in place programs that are focused on inclusivity. Serving the needs of older adults and people with special needs through any community gardening program cannot be undertaken without facilitating the involvement of professional care workers. In order that our horticultural work may be approved as fit to provide such care programs, the "Ellenville Garden Village" project will first register as a nonprofit authorized to partner with Ulster County Health Department.
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| Raised planting beds used in horticultural therapy at a community vegetable garden |
3. Promote health and recreation
Community gardens provide access to nutritionally rich foods that may otherwise be unavailable to low-income families. The “Ellenville Garden Village” project will continue in its original mission to donate freshly-harvested organic vegetables to local food pantries. Cornell Cooperative Extension provides Eat Smart New York (ESNY) nutrition education to support Ellenville's food pantries, and free space is allocated for ESNY staff at Ellenville Farmers’ Market. Given a general unawareness among food package recipients regarding unprocessed foods, we provide information sheets to help identify vegetable varieties and to outline simple cooking methods.
Access to safe, natural settings such as community gardens has a positive influence on health and well-being. Given the physical exertion that “green exercise” requires and the increased consumption of fresh produce, the connection between community vegetable gardens and physical health is clear. Health benefits of gardening include lower rates of heart disease, stroke, and obesity. Being in natural places fosters recovery from mental fatigue, improves outlook and life satisfaction, helps in coping with and recovering from stress, improves ability to recover from illness and injury, restores concentration, and improves productivity.
Low-income residents in Ellenville have cited cost, availability and acceptance as barriers to fruit and vegetable intake. The “Ellenville Garden Village” project is now decreasing these barriers by lowering the cost of produce, increasing access, and increasing acceptance and improving taste perceptions of fruits and vegetables. We are achieving these results by promoting the Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP), by donating fresh produce to food pantries, and by encouraging longer-term unemployed residents to tend their own vegetable plots.
Our project vision includes a program that will focus on accommodation in Ellenville as rented by unemployed people who have expressed an interest in gardening. John will work under the guidance of Cornell Cooperative Extension's Community Horticulture department to design and create small vegetable plots to replace poorly-kept yard areas, so encouraging residents to then care for their own aesthetically-pleasing growing spaces.
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| Transformation of an overgrown site into a beautiful vegetable garden. Catskills, 2014, John Clark |
John will work with each participant through the early, mid and late periods of the growing season in order to provide practical help in taking care of cultivated plots and in nurturing fruit and vegetable plants. Maintenance and care will include weeding, grass-cutting, supporting weak stems, seeking advice regarding sickly-looking plants, thinning-out overcrowded beds, knowing when and how to water plants, gaining an appreciation for the principles of waste-minimizing by composting, and knowing when and how to harvest. Easy ways of preparing and cooking each vegetable variety will be suggested to program participants by ESNY nutrition educators.
This program will provide recreation with good physical exercise, new skills and knowledge, healthy and tasty home-grown food, family activity, and pride in the neighborhood for participating residents, who will receive our support to resume horticultural activities every successive springtime. Moreover, it is hoped that the pleasures and rewards of nurturing, harvesting and eating one's own vegetables will prompt participating residents into an appraisal of self-provision and independence. Individuals and families who feel trapped in lifelong poverty may consequently aspire away from acceptance of unemployment and the cycle of reliance upon others, toward the possibilities of a new, holistically-healthy and rewarding life path of ambition and achievement.
4. Bring community members with common interests together
Community gardens provide a friendly meeting place where people of all ages and cultural backgrounds may work together and share experiences and knowledge in an inclusive, non-competitive setting, with a common interest to grow food and to celebrate and share the harvest. The "universal language" of gardening allows all to enjoy equity, diversity, and inclusion, and participants work together in a way that truly reflects these values.
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| Multigenerational volunteers creating flower beds at Praise Dominion, Ellenville |
Community gardens draw local volunteers to meet together, work beside, and form friendships that likely would never be forged otherwise. Working effectively as a team on an ongoing basis, particularly in a context where participation is voluntary, can be enormously challenging and rewarding, and the “green exercise” of community gardening fosters for volunteers great feelings of enjoyment, energy, vitality, restoration, and self-esteem.
Community gardens involve people in processes that provide food security for all members of their community, and this gives volunteers the opportunity to give back. Our own program's three existing vegetable gardens will require maintenance, and we are revitalizing a vegetable garden in Ellenville in 2019 too. We therefore extend a warm invitation for volunteers to join us in 2018. In whatever capacity anybody is able, all are welcomed and valued, and together our community horticultural work will help to regenerate Ellenville’s holistic well-being.
Project coordinator, John Clark, can be contacted by email: EllenvilleOrgVeg@aol.com
5. Enhance the feeling of community spirit with community gardening
Community gardens are often less about gardening than they are about community development, as they help local residents to meet, talk to one another and network, which bonding leads to further socializing outside of the gardens. Neighbors draw upon this networking resource when facing other issues in the neighborhood, so providing people with a sense of community and security.
As this program continues to work with individuals, associations, and businesses in the Ellenville area we aim to build relationships that will integrate gardening programs into other local community development projects.
Moreover, we intend for partnerships forged through the community gardens program to become a foundation of active support (contributions of time, talent and resources) for other programs whose mission is to foster community spirit in order to improve the economic, social, cultural and environmental well-being of the area.
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| Eat Smart New York provides nutrition education for Ellenville's food pantries |
6. Continue to improve and to beautify land use
People enjoy and take pride in a cleaned up neighborhood, and they come together to try to find new ways to improve where they live. Community gardens build welcoming, safer communities, as neglected plots of land associated with danger and crime are transformed into places where it is difficult for people to conduct illegal activities. Police departments recognize community gardening as an effective crime prevention strategy.
As we continue to improve and beautify land use by steadily creating new community gardens in and around Ellenville, we visualize that this program will improve the morale of people who reside or work here, property values will increase in the cleaned up neighborhoods, and businesses will then recognize a more attractive proposition to invest and locate in Ellenville.
7. Promote sustainable methods of land conservation and use
Cornell Cooperative Extension advocates our ecological and environmental methods, as we apply sustainable principles of organic gardening in our community gardens. Our resource-conserving horticultural work promotes environmental stewardship of soil and plants in accordance with natural systems.
Where possible, we remove invasive species and replace them with native plants surrounding the gardens, we design garden areas as habitats for pollinators and other beneficial wildlife, and we're conscious to preserve heirloom vegetable varieties. The gardens use rain barrels to collect and recycle rain water for irrigation, and we protect water quality by not using herbicides or pesticides. The program shows how organic waste products can be composted and used as a soil fertility resource, and we aim to set up a community compost program that will encourage volunteers and nearby residents to return their nutrient-rich food scraps to the garden.
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| Door-to-door community compost pick-up |
It is imperative that the objective of the “Ellenville Garden Village” project, to improve the holistic well-being of Ellenville and its residents through community-based horticultural initiatives, is realized according to plans that will sustain the project for the long term. In order that our community vegetable gardens program may deliver permanent benefit for Ellenville, we embrace the tried-and-tested guidance of Cornell Cooperative Extension, such that our work is undertaken according to two fundamental management practices: (i) Community initiated, driven and managed efforts - are successful at maintaining a sustainable volunteer workforce and community engagement; and (ii) Cohesive vision - is important for garden management and communication to gardeners, volunteers, support organizations and the broader community.
Ellenville Farmers' Market
Given our community-building objective to enhance the quality of life of Ellenville's residents through nutrition education and the promotion of organic and naturally grown foods, the “Ellenville Garden Village” project has been entrusted to manage Ellenville Farmers’ Market.
Our vision for Ellenville Farmers’ Market is to serve the greatest interests of local residents, farmers and other vendors long term, while helping to regenerate and support our local business community. We aim by 2020 to establish here a thriving farmers’ market, with loyal customers and a nucleus of great vendors: our customers will spend money, return regularly and bring friends, while a nice variety of perhaps twenty successful vendors will bring great products, friendliness and the right pricing, week after week.
In the same way that we have followed the guidance of Cornell Cooperative Extension in setting out a cohesive vision for our community vegetable gardens program, we have sought and taken the best advice in clarifying a vision for Ellenville Farmers’ Market. We have therefore refined the tried-and-tested guidance of the Farmers Market Federation of New York (FMFNY) to meet the specific needs of Ellenville by also working in consultation with Mayor of Ellenville, Jeffrey Kaplan, to produce a six-aim Mission for Ellenville Farmers’ Market to:
1. Support local farmers by providing a viable outlet to sell their product
The task of establishing viable annual farmers' market seasons in Ellenville (of at least twelve weekly vendors) is proceeding according to the strategy of a five-year plan, as our market manager and our steering committee focus upon encouraging (i) commitment from vendors in the local farming (and crafts) community, and (ii) local residents to embrace the market events into their weekly shopping routine.
In order that our efforts may create a regenerative focus for the village through its farmers' market, we continue to meet with local people in positions of responsibility, listening to specialist knowledge and experience, and noting ideas and advice. This and other valuable feedback helps us to formulate a vision of the key factors that we must set in place in order for market days to merit the sustained active support of vendors and customers.
We're conscious that the reputation of the farmers' market as a viable retailing outlet relies on the attention we pay to the look and feel of the market, and to the range, layout and quality of the goods available. As we build year on year, we're confident in our vision that market days in Ellenville will offer the nice range of locally-grown or produced goods that one would expect to find at any established farmers' market, with our vendors covering all the basics, such as vegetables, fruit, meat, bread, cheese, preserves, baked goods, and beverages. Since people like the convenience of one-stop shopping, we're working toward providing for our customers a reliably fuller range of products, such as chocolates, granola, soaps, knitted items, herbs, flowers, and body products. Busier market days will improve the viability for our local farmers of attending Ellenville Farmers' Market.
2. Strengthen the local economy by providing a friendly venue for local consumers and tourists to purchase goods directly from local farmers and crafts people
Providing a clean, safe, friendly, courteous, and professional environment at Ellenville Farmers’ Market is our basis for winning the trust of vendors and customers, as well as that of our neighboring business community.
Central to our vision for the farmers' market to achieve optimal local benefit is that we establish and develop initiatives whereby market days strengthen the local economy. We aim to enhance retention of local dollars through (i) spurring customer spending at neighboring and downtown businesses, and (ii) helping our direct marketers to succeed in business and to therefore generate economic activity within the region.
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| Hanging Rock Falls, Ellenville © Steve Aaron Photography |
Local photographer, Steve Aaron, reminds us how our natural surroundings make this area a popular vacation destination, and Ellenville’s restaurants and Shadowland Theatre lead the way in attracting tourist trade to the village. Building upon our success in gaining a loyal local customer base for farm-fresh fruits and vegetables at Ellenville Farmers' Market, we are working hard for the farmers' market to play a significant role in enhancing the character of the village as a destination for visitors to more fully enjoy. When our collaborative efforts have succeeded in encouraging our local community to fully embrace its farmers' market, the unique ambience of thriving market events will offer a consumer experience with enormous potential from a tourism perspective.
3. Preserve small scale farmers by providing a direct connection with consumers that builds relationships with the local farming community
Relationships of connectedness are fostered at farmers’ markets, where farmers and customers are provided with an opportunity to engage in honest conversation, typically talking about what makes a farm interesting and valuable to the customer (Who is growing their food? Where is it grown? How is it grown?). It is through these direct, person-to-person interactions that farmers’ market vendors strive to establish personal assistance as a basic customer relationship, so helping to strengthen and maintain legitimacy and trust in the vendor.
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| Discussion of the nutritional benefits of kale is enjoyed at Ellenville Farmers' Market |
With good farmer-customer relationships set nicely in place, farmers' market-goers may loyally purchase fresh, local produce they can trust to satisfy their concerns for health and well-being, supporting small scale farmers, social responsibility and green values. The principle of customers' trust also applies to non-farmer vendors. Our vendors also benefit from receiving direct, honest customer feedback on their products as valuable guidance in developing product lines, improving quality, honing product presentation, and refining marketing strategies. The farmers' market is an ideal place for farmers to promote their other farm enterprises among people who value local food, appreciate local agriculture and would be a strong customer base for other farm enterprises, such as farm events, pick-your-own operations, agritourism, etc.
Given that a farmers' market may be a customer’s only direct connection with agriculture, farmers' markets are often considered to represent the “face of agriculture”. Hearing the individual stories of farmers, farmers' market customers learn about the value of agriculture, and, more importantly, the value of supporting local agriculture. Consequently, as part of an effort to preserve small scale farming, farmers recognize the importance for them in taking an active role at farmers' markets in the education of consumers.
4. Enhance the quality of life of local families through nutrition education and the promotion of organic and naturally grown foods
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A key project partnership has been developed with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Eat Smart New York (ESNY).
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5. Act as a showcase to enrich the cultural heritage of the local community
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6. Provide a working setting to teach entrepreneurship skills to local young people
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Ellenville Farmers' Market manager, John Clark, can be contacted by email: EllenvilleOrgVeg@aol.com