Avalon & Project Grow

Through a my friend Kris at the Southeastern MI Permaculture Guild, I got involved as a site coordinator in a community organic gardening project at Avalon Housing communities. Avalon has partnered with Project Grow the create Edible Avalon, a program that provides residents with everything they need to organically grow food and flowers, as well as a coordinator (or two) who help out with building, planting, watering, weeding, checking for pests and diseases, answering questions, and providing programming. I'm super pumped about my site, Parkhurst, because there are TONS of kids there, who seem even more excited than most of the adults. We are trying to arrange for the older kids to get a stand at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market, and actually be able to sell what they grow.

At any rate, Kris, the project coordinator, said the garden was going to be along the side of the building, but we decided to change it to a sunny area at the center of the courtyard. The space on the side is still all set to go, and I'm hoping to fill it in with native wildflowers and see if I can't share some of the knowledge I pick up in my medicinal herbs class with the residents! At first I thought incorporating some kind of faerie theme would be cool, but that could be a bit much. Maybe a lot of kids don't dig that sort of thing? Hopefully, more on this later!