Demonstration Garden | Friendship Gardens Charlotte

The Demonstration Garden at Friendship Trays

Driver R.C. Dellinger backed a Wallace Farm truck into the warehouse back log adjoining Friendship Trays on April 24, 2009 and dumped a load of dark rich soil. And thereafter out tumbled what has become a Demonstration Garden for a collaborative effort to expand Charlotte-Meckenburg gardening and grow healthy fresh produce for the ailing recipients of the community's meals-on-wheels program.

What is it demonstrating?

For many young people whose experience is limited to grocery shopping, it is a place to visit to experience vegetables growing from the vine, on the plant, in the ground. For novice gardeners it is a place to test plant varieties under Charlotte conditions.

And for everyone, it is a living room in which to imagine big plans, to contemplate heathier eating, and to get some exercise pulling weeds, planting seeds, enjoying the outdoors.

Distribution Street leaseholder and longtime Friendship Trays supporter Bruce Parker offered to host the garden, and volunteers from Friendship Trays and Slow Food Charlotte quickly put down roots. Slow Food "adopted" the demonstration garden as one of its projects for 2009, and early in September transformed the site into its current layout.

The vision for the Demonstration Garden, and the collaboration celebrated on this site, was first put into words by Friendship Trays Executive Director Lucy Bush Carter on April 14, 2009:

"My vision is that we will create a network of gardens and growing and we will teach and in the process we will supply the Urban Ministry, [the Center for Community Transitions], bring all of that together because it could create an abundance with the cooperative, right sprit, because it's the right thing to do. We could create an abundance that we can all benefit from.

"For the bottom line of Friendship Trays, it means we can take more of our dollars to subsidize the people that need the meals, rather than spending it on food, which we do now – spending over $300,000 on food. We can reduce that cost and get good fresh stuff and teach people in the process, just the way we do with the Culinary School."

Our Demonstration Garden Pages

Most of the pages on this website deal with the efforts behind the broader Friendship Gardens collaboration. But here are links related specifically to chronicling the Demonstration Garden at 2401 Distribution St. in Charlotte, shown at right on Nov. 21, 2011.

The Diary was set up by months, with links at the bottom of each page to previous pages in the series. The links below will allow the reader to bounce about at will. Most of the monthly pages before mid-August 2010 focus almost entirely on the Demonstration Garden.

Starting in September 2011, many of the the pictures that used to be put into diary pages were made into videos. Then in January 2012, the near-daily video clips and still photos from the Demonstration Garden were folded into short videos combining garden and kitchen activity at Friendship Trays. Many ran as "loops" without sound on the Friendship Trays website. The videos are archived on the Friendship Trays site.

Season Three 2011 Diary: Jan Feb March April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

Season Two 2010 Diary: Jan Feb March April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

Season One 2009 Diary: April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

Season One 2009: Summary A small collection of scenes from the first year.

Season One: The Video.

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.