submitted by Danielle Albano, Co-Manager of the garden

I want to share with you all an exciting new garden initiative that will be starting this Spring! At Sycamore Community Gardens (SCG), Kaylin Lustig (Manager) and I (Co-Manager) are working to create a shared educational garden space. We are partnering with many great organizations to get this project up and running! We are eager to collaborate with a diverse range of organizations –  we are currently in contact with organizations supporting youth, high school students, college students, local gardeners, to list a few. Our new garden space will have a focus on native plants, beneficial pollinators, as well as medicine plants that are important to the Abenaki people, and/or our current gardeners. Many of the SCG gardeners represent diverse cultural roots in Nepal, Bhutan, and 8 countries in Africa. We hope to provide a space where different groups throughout the greater Concord area and NH at large can collaborate with common gardening goals in mind. This will be our first year in this space, but we are hoping to also host 5 guest speaker events on various gardening and culturally based topics. We also plan to have an end of season celebration with traditional food, music, and dance, for example: African drummers, singers, and Nepalese music. A few of our goals will be dependent on our fundraising efforts throughout the year, but we are optimistic for our outcome! 

You can read more about our 2023 plans at https://www.sycamorecommunitygarden.org/about-4

Kaylin and I would like to extend the opportunity to you all at Concord UU Church to become involved in this initiative! We have various options that may be of interest to you.

1. Volunteering at the garden: Once the planting season is here, we will have various volunteer opportunities throughout the season. We are currently asking our current and potential new collaborative partners if they would be interested in volunteering in the garden. If you’d like to learn more about this opportunity, please ask! We are planning to have bi-weekly opportunities on alternating Wednesdays and Saturdays throughout most of May-October.

2. Guest speaker events: As of now we are planning to have our guest speaker events happen on a monthly basis, with the first event happening in June. Would you be interested in attending one of our guest speaker events? Any topics of interest that you’d recommend as a potential subject?

Please reach out to us at sycamorecommunitygarden@gmail.com if you’d like to talk further about anything mentioned above. If you have any questions, or if you would like to become more involved moving forward, we are here to collaborate with you all!