1000 New Gardens

My volunteer project last semester was with a group called 1000 New Gardens. Wait, just ONE volunteer project? What happened to the days of high school when I had four or five? What happened to weekends jam packed with event after obligation?

Irregardless. The mission of 1KNG (get it?) is "to revitalize Missoula's legacy as the Garden City by promoting household organic vegetable gardening by sharing resources, techniques and information throughout the community. The objective of 1,000 NG is to create one thousand new organic vegetable gardens in Missoula on land that has been underused or planted as lawn." It was started last year by a UM student and a Missoula community member.

New gardeners are a mix or community members and college students interested in starting a garden and almost all of our Dig Day volunteers are students from the University of Montana.  Volunteers for Dig Days meet at a park by the river where we give instruction, sign liability forms, and form into groups. These small groups then disperse to different garden sites around Missoula. Once at a site they remove sod, reclaim the dirt from the sod, create a compost pile, and work composted manure into the soil. New gardeners are given resources such as access to the IKNG website (where they can blog, ask questions, and connect with other new and experienced gardens) and information about gardening resources around Missoula.

I was drawn to IKNG because I was looking for environmentally minded volunteer work that was tangible and quantifiable. As important as education and “raising awareness” is, I think it is also very important to have work that shows direct results. There is something empowering about starting with a backyard full of grass and five hours later leaving with a garden that is ready to be planted full of vegetables.  Further, food production in today's industrialized society is incredibly inefficient and harmful to the environment. What is more local and sustainable than your own backyard? The lawn that was there before wasn't doing much good as species habitat, carbon sink, or food producer.

Yet, honestly, in February when I started volunteering with the group, I knew nothing about gardening. The garden at my parent's home is beautiful and produces huge amounts of vegetables, fruits and flowers. The extent of my experience helping out was the occasional weeding or buying starters and the farmer's market. So my involvement with the group was also for somewhat selfish reasons. I consider myself a "new gardener" as well. And no better way to learn than to jump right in.

Between weekly meetings and the three Dig Days in April/May I learned a huge amount about backyard gardening and met a whole lot of truly interesting people. I never once heard a person complain about the hard physical labor and most receiving gardens were incredulous that the service was free. We started almost thirty new gardens this spring. That is thirty people that may not have to buy their lettuce and tomatoes from California, thirty people who are excited about gardening and getting their friends involved, thirty people eating less food from the industrial, chemical and petroleum heavy food system.

And because I was only committed to one volunteer project instead of twenty, I had time to grow a garden of my own. I planted a couple rows of spinach, lettuce and snap peas, hoping they would mature before I had to leave Missoula. There was something pretty satisfying about watching what looked like a boring brown patch of dirt erupt with green (and not just grass and dandelions).

Check out the IKNG website here
Read the Montana Kaimin article about IKNG here
Read the Missoulian article about IKNG here
And a video...