Charlotte has been a little behind with the urban farming trend, plots with outstanding success are few and far between. I use the term
trend loosely, but fittingly, based on the history of Charlotte planning and development, which follows the tide of nation-wide city building trends: suburbs cropping up then a sudden boost to move back to center city; parking lots circling the outer perimeter of strip malls then a shift towards pedestrian friendly shops with integrated shopping; sports arenas on the edge of town getting razed and integrated with the uptown night life. The history of the city shows that in a couple decades (or less) the development trends will change, and the building concentration will again change with the tides.
A recent email discussion among a handful of gardeners got me thinking about why this is, and I think it's because there are essentially a bunch of garden spiders (spiders can be a good thing in the garden!) building webs on top of each other.
These thoughts, of course, are coming from me: a lifelong non-joiner (thanks, debilitating shyness) that is looking in mostly from the outside. Those with insider interest might have a different perspective.
It's great to have successful, well-organized groups, but are we helping each other with such a saturated overlap or are we spreading funding too thin when mission statements are essentially the same?
What about a giant garden mash up? How do we connect the dots?
1 comment:
Interesting...I don't know how you can fix it or work this problem out. The garden we are in is part of the Urban Harvest group out of Houston and is probably the least active of all the gardens---mostly because we are semi-rural and a lot of people have their own space to garden. I know they have their own board and everything, which to me goes a bit far, but it works I suppose.
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