Meet your neighbors: Noah

Meet your neighbor: Noah B.
Age: 29
Neighborhood: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York

NP: What project did you do?
NB: Community gardening - Greene Acres Community Garden (greeneacres.interactivist.net/)

NP: Why did you start your project?
NB: I got into community gardening and sustainable agriculture when in lived in Colorado Springs, and when I moved to Brooklyn, I wanted to join a community garden.

Truth be told, it's very hard to join a community garden in New York City (you could write a thesis about this, or discuss it with me over beers). Long story short, I helped start my own community garden, so I could join one.

NP: How long did it take you?
NB: It never ends, community gardening.

Seriously, it took a summer (May on...) to make it look like something was happening and to generate interest from the people who lived and worked on the few blocks adjacent to the garden. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned that summer, built raised beds over the winter and planted our first crop of fruits, flowers and vegetables the next spring. Over the winter, we also wrote by-laws, made up some rules and got the garden administratively organized.

NP: What were the major challenges you encountered during your project?
NB: First, getting community members interested, and then, like with all community organizing, developing some sort of consensus amongst the diverse people involved on the many issues we had to deal with. In the end, it took time, patience, openness and a lot of talking and listening. It also helped to aim low; that is: not to try to take on too much or to try to work too
fast. Things always take longer than you think (especially when you're working with a lot of people), which means you end up doing less than you think you can do.

It is also challenging to work with the "parent" non-profit organization that actually owns the land our garden is on and provides a lot of support for our garden. Often, the non-profit would have a plan for something they'd want to do and the gardeners would be completely disinterested in this plan and have something else in mind. At times, we (the gardeners) had to be forceful about asserting our priorities but also figure out how to incorporate the parent organization's ideas because we did not want to say no to them and bite the hand that feeds us. After two or three years, I feel like we've developed a good relationship with the parent organization, where there are clear roles and boundaries, they respect the gardeners and our garden and we look to them to provide the skilled and expert support that they are great at providing.

NP: What did you enjoy most about your project?
NB: Building friendships with the people in my neighborhood, growing food to eat and flowers to enjoy and (this is actually my favorite) getting neighborhood kids into the garden to enjoy a bit of nature in the big city and to see that tomatoes don't just come from the grocery store, they grow on a plant (that you grew from seed!).

NP: What would you have done differently if you could do it all over again?
NB: (This is something we're still working on.) Get even more of our neighbors involved in the garden. We could always use more people to help take care of the garden, and I think we constantly need to actively reach out to residents, businesses, community groups and others in our neighborhood. In a community garden, you're usually thinking of what to plant next or how to maintain the compost pile, and in addition to having gardeners in charge of those efforts, I think we need someone in charge of outreach.

NP: What's your advice for other people who want to do the same project?
NB: Find others in your city/town that have worked on something similar and talk to them about local resources for your project. In New York City there are hundreds of community gardens and over a dozen advocacy groups that promote gardening, ecology, composting and other urban environmental and green space issues. They are great resources for everything from sample by-laws to plans on how to build compost bins to seeds to educators who can lead workshops. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, so spend some time finding others who've accomplished (or tried to) the same thing you want to do.

NP: What's your next project?
NB: My Neighbor Project:
Get married
Buy a house
Conceive a neighbor

NP: What would you like to see Neighbors Project accomplish?
NB: I'm busy and lazy. Does the Neighbors Project have advice on how I can a) be less busy and b), with my newfound free time, be neighborly with minimal effort?