(In 1991, there were no community gardens in Lawrence. Today, there are more than twenty. This is the story of how one of the first got its start.)
In January 1991, I moved to Lawrence to attend grad school a few months after finishing a farm apprenticeship in upstate New York. Farming had been a detour from my art education and possibly a new path. Up until then, I had been making dark and foreboding paintings and prints of small towns and their adjacent rural landscapes in Iowa and Indiana where I’d been in school. But in the spring of 1990, I had a realization that for all my concern about the Farm Crisis, and heartfelt depictions of places being gutted by it, I really didn’t know much about agriculture, big or small. So, with no job lined up and no commitments, I made a phone call (pre-internet). I found the number in a book at Platypus Bookshop in Evanston, IL while visiting home that complied descriptions and contacts for a host of “alternative jobs,” things like working on a fishing boat, teaching English in a foreign county, and farming.
Rose Valley Farm
The number was for Rose Valley, an organic farm and home of the New York Garlic Seed Foundation just south of Lake Ontario near Rochester. After a ten-minute chat with farmers Liz Henderson and Dave Stern, where they mostly asked about my capacity for hard physical labor and my politics, I got the job and soon packed up my Corolla to head east for the summer. My time at Rose Valley opened me up to a new world. The hard physical labor. The belief that Dave and Liz held about making sure their prices were accessible to working class people. And the directness of it all – how there was no second guessing about whether not the work we were doing was good or useful. I learned that it was a Sisyphean task to keep the farm going year to year as big growers were starting to go organic, and grocery chains like Wegmans were starting to offer corporate organics alongside that of local farmers.
When I arrived in Lawrence a few months later to pursue an MFA in Painting at KU, I was more focused on continuing my Ag education than art, and immediately sought out a farm job. At the local co-op across the street from my apartment on 7th St., I saw the contact for Wakarusa Valley Farm run by Mark Lumpe. I called him and soon I was picking rocks from the fields, planting salad mix, and helping Mark put plastic over the frame of his new greenhouse.
Sign I made for Wakarusa Valley Farm
I worked with Mark for a few months before I asked about leasing an acre to try my own thing. We had talked about starting a little CSA like the one at Rose Valley, where people came to the farm to work for an hour or two a month in exchange for produce. He liked the idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t going to work. I would have to commute to and from the farm while trying to finish grad school and keep my other job at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop.
In the early 1990’s, WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) programs were getting popular, and urban farming was just beginning to blossom again, 50 years after the “Victory Gardens” of WWII. The time felt right and I thought If I couldn’t start a CSA at Mark’s I still wanted to do something that combined my interest in farming with a vison of collaboration and community. It was that desire that led me to community gardens. A visit to the library gave my interest a direction and a template. I found a book about the Boston Urban Gardeners (BUG) which outlined the step-by-step process to organizing and establishing a neighborhood community garden. Voila!
I shared my idea and the BUG book with a few like-minded friends who got on board right away. We put up posters around town announcing our first meeting and began to look for a suitable site for the garden. After talking with folks at the City, we found a spot that seemed perfect, a half-acre below the Kansas River bridge in an unused part of Constant Park. We worked out the logistics with the City and got liability insurance, and in the Spring of 1993 received permission to begin our garden. And then… as many will recall, there was a flood. If you’ve ever walked the river levee, you may have seen a small sign among the rocks that marks the high-water mark from that summer. Needless to say, Constant Park went from the perfect spot for our garden to being six feet under water. We’d have to find another site. In the meantime, our group began the process of getting non-profit status in the hopes that having it would give us some legitimacy and a few more fundraising options.
Me as the Co-op produce manager in 1993
Our fallback after the flood was a grassy lot adjacent to the new home of the Community Mercantile Co-op at 9th & Mississippi. I had just started working there in the produce department and discovered that the lot was being maintained by the Co-op since both properties had the same owner. We presented our community garden vision to the Co-op board of directors. They resisted initially, worried they would lose the few bucks they were making off of parking during KU football games.
While we waited to get our approval, a couple of us were able to grow a test plot on the space, mostly greens, basil and tomatoes, and got the soil tested. And we explored possibilities for the garden layout and began designing the garden handbook. The layout of the garden was straightforward with individual plots, common areas, a gathering place and a tool shed (later we built a greenhouse). We didn’t need much in the way of money, but we were able to get a CDBG grant through the City which covered our liability insurance, a few tools and supplies to build a fence. The Co-op provided water via a very long hose.
When we were finally ready, we had a local farmer haul his little tractor over and begin to break up the compressed soil. Then we trucked in about 25 loads of composted manure from the horse stables that used to be where the 6th Street Wal-Mart is now. And then we planted. We had families, single folks and students all gardening together. We gave workshops and partnered with arts groups, and then in our second year we began our harvest festival. We closed off the alley and had live music (Al Trout and the Hokum Washboard Band), a chili eating contest, egg toss, food made from the garden and craft booths. It was a blast!
We also started selling produce to the Co-op, an arrangement inspired by the new (at the time) garden/market in Kansas City called the Blue Bird. We even had an occasional booth at farmers market to sell produce and share information about the LCGP. The garden thrived. I helped coordinate it for about ten years (until my schedule as a muralist kept me out of town too much) and I continued to have a plot there until 2017.
The LCGP’s 30th anniversary will be next year. It became more than we could have ever imagined. Not just a place to grow food, but also an improvised gathering space where people from different walks of life met, worked together and made friends. Thanks to all the folks who continue to care for this little gem. It’s heartwarming to see that its spirit continues.
The LCGP garden in 2003