Hollenback Community Garden
Meeting Minutes for August 20th, 2009
In Attendance:
Jennifer, Charlie, Kirk, Mike, John Ryan, Judy, Sarah, Val, John, Cody, Tony, Deema, Cara, Mark, Rachel B., Dana, Roma, Elizabeth, Emerson, Michael M. and Calvin (from The Local – the NY Times Ft. Greene/Clinton Hill Blog)
Ice Breaker: Fondest Childhood Summer Memory
Jennifer: That feeling that summer was endless
Charlie: Family holiday, get together picnic, especially at his Uncle Reuben’s lake with its squishy bottom and the mornings when they’d go to the ice house and break up huge trunks of ice for watermelons covered in burlap
Kirk: The giant Vermont brush burning fires
Mike: Geneseo bike rides out to climb up the ravines and waterfalls
John Ryan: Pretending to be a fish and a dolphin
Judy: laying in the grass and looking up at the stars, hearing the sounds of nature
Cara: Unsupervised time at Quaker summer camp with bonfires on Sunday nights
Cody: playing the the creek
John: punishments by his father
Tony: camping with his brother in the Delaware Water Gap
Dana: the beach and ocean on the Jersey shore with her siblings
Rachel B: the freedom of being with friends, running amok and appreciating nature for the first time
Mark: stealing pieces of wood and nails from construction sites and building a fort with his friends – a fort which they defended from an “attack” of other kids with an arsenal of rocks
Updates
The 2009 Greenest Block in Brooklyn Contest
We won first prize in the community garden streetscape category! In addition to the honor and recognition, the award comes with $300.
The Common Area Planning Committee (Deema, Carolyn, Cody, Rachel M, Rachel B, Ruth, Suzanne)
The committee met in the garden to discuss their own inspirations and how to incorporate the brainstorm of ideas generated at our last meeting. Apparently, some members of the neighborhood walked by and offered some ideas as well.
Some of the ideas they are kicking around are…
– seating (making stump benches and stone benches)
– paving (having a paved section and an unpaved section/laying slate or bluestone down with ground cover in between them – with perhaps creeping thyme or sedem as ground cover)
– keeping the area flexible and simple and maintaining its openness
– plantings (container gardens, ferns against the wall, covering the harvester drainage pipe)
– features (the earth oven, building a lattice, an umbrella, a hammock)
The committee will meet again. The purpose of the second meeting is to come up with a few proposals (with budgets) to bring back to the garden. The committee will send out the time and place of their next meeting to the membership so anyone interesting in lending their voice at this point in the process can attend. Thanks for the great work you guys!
to be continued…
Hollenback Community Garden 