Garden Coordinators Meet | Friendship Gardens Charlotte

Jan. 20, 2011

Garden coordinators meet

They dig holes for bedding plants and they weed and they connect with volunteers and they weed and they harvest and they weed and ...

And they met one another, some for the first time, on Thursday evening as Slow Food Charlotte brought together the volunteer leaders of the Friendship Gardens effort for a "snackluck" gathering at the FABO coffee shop and art gallery at 2820 Selwyn Ave.

And there was news: Coordinator Kathy Metzo, pictured above right, introduced the effort's new caps that will be given to the coordinators of each garden in thanks for their work and as part of a larger branding effort.

Slow Food leader Thom Duncan tipped his hat to the Women's Impact Fund, whose $70,000 grant last year has helped expand the effort begun in April 2009 on a weedy lot behind an industrial building in Charlotte's South End. Duncan said the group has grown more rapidly than the minimums projected in the grant application. Grant funds are paying for two part-time coordinators, but the vision remains focused on creating a "volunteer-driven mechanism when it's up and running."

Coordinator Henry Owen, who spent the summer of 2010 connecting with volunteers and weeding and so forth at the Demonstration Garden in South End, will focus now on a collaboration between Friendship Gardens and the N.C. correctional facility at Camp Greene off Tyvola Road. There were a number of jokes about Owen "going to prison."

Owen said that during a recent meeting with prison officials, the enthusiastic warden exclaimed, "I've got 12 acres and 200 men who can plow tonight!"

Owen said they would start more slowly, with 15 men and one acre of ground planted mostly in cover crops to rebuild the soil. But the prospects are for a far larger installation that could substantially increase the Friendship Gardens harvests.

Please see other parts of this site for information on Friendship Gardens, its partners, and how you can help. Tour the gardens and enjoy our photo diary.

For more information, e-mail Kathy Metzo.

Friendship Gardens Charlotte
Creating local, renewable nutritious food resources for meals-on-wheels recipients
An Initiative of Slow Food Charlotte and Friendship Trays, Inc.

Friendship Trays, 2401-A Distribution St. Charlotte, NC 28203 voice 704-333-9229 fax 704-333-5947
Meals-on-wheels in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC
Delivering, in a caring and friendly manner, balanced meals to individuals in this community
who are unable, because of age or infirmity, to obtain and prepare their own meal
Friendship Trays is a 501(c)(3) organization. Employer ID #56-1201496. Financial information about this organization and a copy of its license
are available from the State Solicitation Licensing Branch at 919-807-2000. The license is not an endorsement by the State.