Gateway Greening's Community Gardeners
GATEWAY GREENING'S COMMUNITY GARDENERS
Training: April 7 - June 16 and October 6 and 13, 2004; Gateway Greening offices; Mel Watkin, Instructor
Exhibition SITE #1: PPRC Photography Project Gallery
January 12 - April 13, 2005
Exhibition SITE #2: Dennis and Judith Jones Visitor and Education Center at Forest Park
January 14 - April 13, 2005
Special Exhibition: Missouri Botanical Garden
July 5 - August 19, 2005
Website: www.gatewaygreening.org
Founded in 1984, Gateway Greening Inc. has received national recognition including a 2008 Award of Excellence by the National Garden Club and a 2005 Urban Beautification prize from the American Horticultural Society. Gateway Greening's Executive Director, Gwenne Hayes-Stewart, describes her organization as one that celebrates, supports, and provides resources for thousands of community gardeners, neighbors, and volunteers developing hundreds of planted green spaces and food-producing gardens on vacant land, school yards and parks throughout the city of St. Louis. In addition to the enormous task of urban beautification, Gateway Greening also works with over 100 public schools and gathers empirical data to support anecdotal evidence documenting the economic and social value of community gardens. One survey, conducted with the Public Policy Research Center and published in 2007, was entitled Gateway Greening Community Garden Areas, Reversing Urban Decline. Among other issues, this two-part study measured property values and crime rates. It looked at improvements in population retention, occupancy rates and owner-occupied units surrounding urban green areas created by Gateway Greening volunteers.
Participants in this Photography Project represented Gateway Greening gardens all over the city. Each participant took the skills and techniques they learned in 13 weeks of training and photographed their work in gardens as diverse as Lafayette Park in South City, the educational garden at Gateway Elementary Magnet School for Math, Science and Technology in North City, Bell Garden in mid-town near Grand Center and the Imani Family Center's Peace Garden in Jennings.
--Mel Watkin, Instructor and Director
PPRC Photography Project
PARTICIPANTS and their Community Gardens:
William Bennett, Gateway Elementary Magnet School for Math, Science and Technology
Wardwell Buckner, Lafayette Park
Bob Byrne, Shaw Neighborhood Garden Club.s Dorothy Park
Ruth Kamphoefner, Lafayette Park
Marilyn Lane, Waverly Place Boulevard
Kristin Lindner, Gateway Greening.s Outdoor Office
LaDoris Payne and Ola Bledsoe, Imani Family Center's Peace Garden
Cheryl Schaefer, Bell Community and Demonstration Garden
COMMUNITY PARTNERS:
Gateway Greening Inc.
Public Policy Research Center at UMSL
Missouri Botanical Garden
Forest Park Forever
Dennis and Judith Jones Visitor and Education Center at Forest Park