spark ideas for cooking with fresh produce, she emails healthy recipes to employees that highlight ingredients available at the Friday market, which is also attended by individuals using the CAT transfer station, as well as many residents of nearby neighborhoods that walk and bike to the market. The results of a recent survey completed by employees that have shopped at the market since its inception in April 2011 confirmed for Revay that SGC is on the right track with its health-focused checklist: 60 percent noted that they and their families now eat more fruits and vegetables because of easy access to the market.
Creating Community Gardens Brooke Hollander, a consultant for Tropical Environmental Consul- tants, in Naples, has been leading the charge to create a Collier County Community Garden. It would be Collier’s first public community garden on county-owned land, a space where local residents could grow and harvest their own organi- cally grown produce. Hollander notes that
cial to each other. When we design guilds within an edible landscape, we appeal to sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. The plant combination usually contains native flowers for color and ben- eficial insect attractors; it also provides wildlife habitat and of course, is a major food source. Herbs are often chosen for culi-
Edible Earth Works shared neighborhood garden
nary purposes and as pest deterrents and aids for household members’ ailments, such as allergies.”
Perhaps the easiest place to dig in and initiate changes that cultivate health may be a community garden. These shared “fruit and vegetable pharmacies” offer positive im- pacts that reach beyond well-being. According to a 2008 Real Estate Economics report, The Effect of Community Gardens on Neighboring Property Values, the sale prices of properties within 1,000 feet of a garden rise significantly, both immediately and over time—another incentive to take up a trowel and grow the trend.
Golden Gate Community Gardening Team
Lee County established such a garden in 2010, at Lakes Park. A joint project between the Lee County Parks & Recreation Department and the Lakes Park Enrichment Foundation, the garden’s 72 plots have been full during two growing seasons, and it has a waiting list. Several Collier County schools have also planted community gardens.
Even area homeowner’s associations are participating in the growing trend. Within Palm Crest Villas, a master- planned condominium community of 47 units in North Naples, residents are invited to participate in a community garden designed by neighbors Beth and Brian Housewert. “When we downsized from a house in Golden Gate to a condominium, the president of the homeowner’s associa- tion and his wife, both avid gardeners, approached us about installing a community garden. They knew that at our house, when we wondered what was for dinner we only looked as far as our 1.3-acre organic garden plot,” says Beth, who has initiated several food co-ops in Collier County. Nearly all the residents approved of planting the garden, even though not everyone chose to participate.
Andrea Guerrero, of Edible Earthworks Landscapes, LLC, in Fort Myers, recently spearheaded a different sort of com- munity garden that also brings people together and offers easy access to healthy food, while helping the environment. One of her current projects, a neighborhood “guild” garden between shared driveways, is located off McGregor Boulevard. Here, neighbors share in the garden’s maintenance and harvest. “In gardening, a guild is a harmonious assembly of plants that creates a diverse mixture whose elements have a pur- pose,” explains Guerrero. “The plants are chosen to be benefi-
natural awakenings June 2012 31
For more information, visit Fit-Friendly at
Tinyurl.com/ LeeCountyInjuryPrevention; the Collier County Smart Growth Coalition at
Tinyurl.com/72efs7d; SafeHealthy-
Children.org;
TropicalEnvironmentalConsultants.com; and
EdibleEarthWorks.com.
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