Permaculture at Bright Street Community Garden

As part of SJC's Urban Farming and Gardening Workshop Series, permaculture extraordinaire Wanda Knapik came to JC to give a demonstration at an underutilized lot on Bright Street for growing food using permaculture principles. It was a great turn out despite the threat of rain. Wanda started the event with some T'ai Chi to get the energy flowing and to keep us warm. Then we discussed the energies that a garden needs: sun, water, and wind. The site orientation is perfect for sun exposure, but with out a water connection we needed to get creative. Some ideas included the use rain barrels that collect water from the neighboring buildings, or getting help from the Frank Conwell Middle School next door.

Pat Byrne and Anne McTernan are the masterminds behind this community garden. Pat, who lives next door to the empty lot, took the initiative to contact the developer to find out if they could do something with it and he agreed. They want to grow vegetables and flowers, have a place to sit and relax, and maybe even show movies.

If anyone has some chickens, the garden would like to borrow them for a weekend to clean up the ground cover.

If you want to help in the creation of this wonderful garden contact Pat at BrightStreetGarden (at) gmail (dot) com