Don’t Lose the Plot: Making Community Gardens That Endure

Community gardens create opportunities for people to connect with the land and their communities as well as grow their own food, making them good for mental health as well as physical. But just like with any garden, it takes planning and care to make them sustainable (in every sense of the word). Our panel of experienced community garden organizers and supporters, hosted by founder and director of Veterans’ Employment Base Camp and Organic Garden, will offer the strategies, practices, policies, and resources they use to keep their community gardens thriving.

Presenter: Lovay Wallace-Singleton comes from a military and agricultural family—summer vacations in her youth involved hands-on training at her uncle’s 17-acre farm, she served in the US Navy for 20 years, and she worked as Disabled Veterans Outreach Programmer for Indiana and Mississippi. She has a BS in business administration from Alcorn State University. In 2011 Lovay founded Veteran’s Employment Base Camp and Organic Garden, whose mission is to assist homeless and disabled veterans with transitional employment and horticultural therapy. They provide healthy food workshops, agriculture events, and children’s gardening programming. In 2020 they launched a Youth Farmers’ Market program, in partnership with the Boys & Girls Club; its goal is to facilitate a youth-led farmers’ market in the Greater 5 Points community, a racially and economically marginalized, low food-access area. Learn more about Lovay.

About Growing Oregon Gardeners: Level Up Series

The cost of food keeps climbing. One in five people faces hunger in Oregon. And the pandemic showed us the fragility of our supply system. Growing our own food—for us, for our families, for our neighbors—is an action gardeners can take to strengthen food security in our local communities. This year's Growing Oregon Gardeners: Level Up series is aimed at helping gardeners take a bite out of hunger. The closed-captioned webinars will be broadcast via Zoom and streamed via our Facebook page on the second Tuesday of the month, at noon, February through October 2024. This series is open to the public, and OSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers receive 1 Continuing Education Credit for each class. You can take one, or take all. This webinar is being recorded and will be available to view on our website within two weeks of airdate.