Grassroots Gardens

I have been involved with Grassroots Gardens for about 4 years now. I kind of fell into it. A friend of mine was working on a community garden at the corner of West and Hudson on the West Side, and told me that the city wanted to take it away to make way for infill housing. I went over to the garden saw how beautiful it was and thought to myself, "NO WAY!" This garden was full of life, it contains a peach tree, tomatoes, squash, beets, chard, carrots, peppers, peas, etc as well as a diverse assortment of flowers. Our little group organized and got about 500 signatures and sent them to Brian Davis (who would not agree to meet with us!) He sent back a letter stating that he had talked to the block club president and that the community wanted this in-fill housing. We shopped our petitions around and found that once you shine a light on something it is easy to ensure that your ideas will be heard. The house was never built and we still have a great garden!

That first year I didn't really garden, I just worked on the organizing end of things. We got together a little group we called, "The Buffalo Garden Group." This group was pretty much me, Justin Weidenbach, and Anna Falicov. Anna put together a great policy brief that we brought to the city, and to Tim Wannamaker (then head of economic development) to see if we could make into some sort of policy or ordinance. This didn't really work, as no real follow up came from the city.

Our little group disbanded shortly thereafter because we had other things to do and our garden was safe, but I became a board member of Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo, and then became the Vice President, then President of the board. That was about 3 years ago and the ride ever since has been an amazing learning experience! I have now started gardening much more regularly and have a roof top garden outside my window. If anyone wants to start a Community Garden in Buffalo leave a comment and I will do my best to get back to you. There will certainly be more posts on this in the future.