NEWSURBAN GARDENING

A 31-year-old organic farm in Maryland's Montgomery County may not be around for much longer unless we act w. Earlier this year, County officials voted to turn Nick's Organic Farm, the County's only organic seed farm, into two private soccer fields. Unless the decision is reversed, farmer Nick Maravell will be forced  in January to vacate the land he's tilled for more than three decades.

More than 22,000 people have petitioned County Executive Ike Leggett to protect Nick's Organic farm, but he still hasn’t taken action. This Wednesday, Maravell and his supporters need your help to make sure Montgomery County does the right thing and saves Nick's Organic Farm.

Supporters will be holding a rally and press conference and hand-delivering petitions to Executive Leggett this Wednesday. Will you make a quick phone call to amplify their message? It will just take a minute and will show County officials just how much support the farm has. Here’s what to do:

1) Call the County Office of Public Information at: (240) 777-6507. Say that you would like to leave a message for County Executive Ike Leggett.

2) Express your support for Nick’s Organic Farm by using one of the following scripts. Feel free to speak from your heart and share your story—the more personal, the better.

If you live outside of Montgomery County:
Hello, my name is _________ and I am calling in regards to Nick's Organic Farm. Nick's farm is nationally recognized model farm that has pioneered organic and sustainable farming practices across the country. Instead of turning this into soccer fields, the county should use this amazing resource as an educational center. I am from _____(city and state)______ but want you to know that the national food movement community is watching closely to see what Montgomery County does. Please protect Nick’s Organic Farm.

If you’re a resident of Montgomery County:
Hello, my name is ____________ and I am a resident of __(city)____. I am calling as a constituent to ask Executive Ike Leggett to continue his support of local and sustainable food and agriculture by preserving Nick's Organic Farm. This farm is an important educational center for our children. There is immense public support for keeping the farm so please listen to your constituents, and protect Nick’s farm. Thank you for your time.

3) Report back on your experience here.

After months of campaigning and a lot of hard work  from grassroots, local food organizations like Honeylove, California beekeepers received a big break. At the Mar Vista Community Council meeting last night, a motion was passed to allow for the implementation of a Beekeeping Pilot Program in Mar Vista, a neighborhood in Los Angeles.

The move came after more than 1,900 Change.org members signed a petition created by Mar Vista residents Chelsea and Rob McFarland, the founders of Honeylove. The request for a pilot beekeeping program will now move on to the Los Angeles City Council.

In the Community Council's own words: "The [Mar Vista Community Council] Board therefore recommends the implementation of a Beekeeping Pilot Program in [order] to test safety and develop best practices for future expansion. We urge the City of LA to adopt a policy that includes conditions relating to maintenance, location, registration and notification to assure for the safety of all residents which may result in the continued preservation of quality of life and preservation of single-family residential districts."

One backyard beekeeper is learning that when it comes to managing his hive, it's not the bees that are dangerous, so much as local regulations.

Forsyth County, Georgia resident Nicholas Weaver has been raising bees for the past 12 years, starting the hobby when he was just 13 years old. When he first started beekeeping, he and his family researched the legalities of beekeeping in their area: they checked local zoning codes; asked fellow beekeepers; and made sure that the neighborhood association didn’t have any prohibitions regarding honeybees. They couldn't find any laws against raising honeybees, and thus began Weaver's hobby.

Yet, in August of this year, Weaver had a zoning violation filed against him through the Code Enforcement Office. Upon further research, Weaver found that, despite this violation notice, bees and beekeeping are not addressed anywhere within residential zoning regulations of the Unified Development Code. What he learned was that in instances like this one in which an issue like beekeeping is not legislated about, it is up to the discretion of the Planning and Development Director of the Forsyth County Planning and Zoning Department to decide the legality of the practice.

Despite a lack of legislation about beekeeping, in Forsyth County, and in most Georgia counties, the majority of honeybees are in fact raised in residential areas by "backyard beekeepers." Without these local, sustainable beekeepers, the survival of the European honeybee would be at risk.

After a fruitful campaign on Change.org, a Memphis urban garden will keep on growing.

Adam Guerrero grows vegetables, produces biodiesel, raises honeybees, and composts in the front and back yards of his Memphis home. He even brings some of the local students by to teach them about sustainable food production. But after a neighbor complained about the smells emanating from the yard and a county judge deemed the operation to be a “nuisance,” Guerrero worried that he would have to dismantle the garden he’s cultivated for the past two years.

Two Memphis residents, Kristen Heath and Hannah Giles, didn’t want the community to lose the treasured garden, so they turned to Change.org. The women created a petition to save Guerrero’s garden. After only one week, the online petition got nearly 9,000 signatures and was covered in local newspapers and TV stations, Grist, Treehugger, and even the Washington Post. The two women also organized local rallies and protests in support of Guerrero.

"I was very angry that what this teacher was trying to do for his students was just taken apart and not even looked at," Heath told WREG after she created the petition.

On Friday, Guerrero received some good news. He attended his follow-up hearing with Judge Larry Potter armed with a lawyer and photos showcasing his efforts to clean up—but not dismantle—his garden. Judge Potter agreed that Guerrero’s garden was headed in the right direction and that so long as the teacher continued to tidy up the operation, he could keep it.  According to news reports, the judge clarified his original stance: He said he never told Guerrero he couldn't have a garden, but that in order to have one, he would need to seriously clean it up.

Memphis resident and school teacher, Adam Guerrero, brings new meaning to the term "green thumb." In the front and back yards of his Nutbush-area home, Guerrero grows eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers; makes his own biodiesel and soap; composts all of his food scraps; harvests rainwater; and even raises honeybees.

Guerrero's urban garden is certainly a community attraction. It's a big hit with the local students he invites over to learn gardening and food production skills. The operation even earned high praise from Felder Rushing, author of several gardening books and board member of the American Horticulture Association. Rushing recently told Commercial Appeal that Guerrero's garden was "his kind of yard."

But despite Guerrero's good deeds and growing fan club, his garden may not live beyond this week.

In fewer than five days, more than 2,500 people have joined an online campaign urging a judge to save a Memphis urban garden from destruction.

Memphis residents Kristen Heath and Hannah Giles launched the campaign on Change.org after reading about Adam Guerrero’s garden in the local newspaper.

Guerrero, a high school math teacher and board member of the organization GrowMemphis, grows vegetables, raises honeybees, and produces biodiesel in the yard of his Nutbush-area home. Judge Larry Potter recently deemed Guerrero’s garden to be a “nuisance” that contained “rubbish or garbage,” and ruled that he must dismantle the operation. Guerrero is set to appear in court on Friday, September 23, 2011, to prove that he complied with Judge Potter’s ruling. Local citizens are working to reverse the ruling before Friday’s hearing.

In fewer than 48 hours, more than 300 people have joined a campaign on Change.org calling on Los Angeles City Council members to support gardening in the city.

Ron Finley, a South Los Angeles resident who launched the online petition campaign at Change.org, is asking that councilmembers amend an ordinance which requires residents to obtain costly permits before growing gardens on parkways, the city-owned strips of land between curbs and sidewalks.

“The high cost of the permit to plant is very prohibitive for communities will very little excess income,” said Finley. “A lot of these places have very few options for healthy fruits and vegetables, so they are being called ‘food deserts.’ Parkway gardens would add food options, enhance lives, open up communication, and build stronger ties in communities."

Los Angeles residents are required to maintain their parkways by mowing and watering them. But under a local ordinance, citizens wishing to grow plants on parkways must first obtain permits which cost at least $400 and up to thousands of dollars. Even with the permits, plants can be no taller than 36 inches.

UPDATE 9/12/11: The Mar Vista Community Council pushed the vote to legalize beekeeping until October 11, 2011. That gives us even more time to ramp up support for this campaign! Please sign Chelsea and Rob McFarland's petition asking the community council to legalize urban beekeeping in the Mar Vista community.

Chelsea and Rob McFarland and their team at Honeylove, a non-profit, have been working tirelessly to make urban beekeeping legal in Mar Vista, a district on the West Side of Los Angeles. They will find out if their efforts come to fruition tomorrow, September 13th, when the community council votes on whether or not to sanction an urban beekeeping pilot program.

In the meantime, they're certainly garnering attention for their cause. Back in July, Honeylove led a flash mob at their local farmers' market, raising awareness about the issue of urban beekeeping among hundreds of shoppers. A few weeks later, they celebrated National Honeybee Awareness Day by dressing up in honeybee costumes and offering photo ops, information about beekeeping, and bee-related crafts for kids.

Now we're approaching the moment of truth: Following the successful completion of the district's feasibility study on urban beekeeping, the community council will finally vote on September 13th on whether or not to legalize a pilot beekeeping program. If approved, the program will pave the way for Mar Vista residents  to have the same basic beekeeping rights as their close neighbors in Santa Monica, as well as residents in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Denver, Spokane, Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Ron Finley's South Los Angeles property isn't like any other on the block. Thanks to his supporters and Change.org, it will stay that way.

Los Angeles regulations mandate that residents maintain their homes' parkways, the city-owned strips of grass that separate the curb from the sidewalk. While most citizens water and mow their parkways, Finley decided to do something more useful with the plot in front of his Crenshaw-area home. He turned it into a vibrant urban garden, growing a variety of fresh fruits and veggies like watermelon, kale, and tomatoes.

His seemingly innocuous hobby got him into trouble with the law.

While the oasis was a big hit with most neighbors and passersby, Finley's produce patch was technically illegal. L.A. regulations say that residents must apply for and obtain an expensive permit before growing food on parkways. One neighbor's complaint and Finley's lack of a permit earned him a citation, and officials threatened to make the gardener turn his cornucopia back into a patch of grass.

UPDATE 8/22/11: Change.org just got word that the hearing about Ron Finley's garden has been postponed until further notice. This is a great sign of progress, and we will update you with more information as it becomes available.

Most of South Central Los Angeles' parkways — plots of public land between the sidewalk and curb — feature nothing more than scraggly patches of grass. But not the parkway in front of Ron Finley's house. The stretch of land near the Crenshaw resident's home is an urban oasis brimming with fresh kale, tomatoes, squash, melons, and a bounty of other fruits and vegetables. Not only does the garden beautify one of the most economically depressed communities in all of L.A., it serves as an education spot for children and even provides neighbors with fresh fruits and veggies.

"It's fresh, healthy, organic food rather than the GMOs and no-flavored stuff at the store that you don’t know where it came from or how far it was trucked," says Finley.

The garden certainly sounds too good to be true. And if the city gets its way, it just might be: Depending on the results of a hearing scheduled for this Friday, August 26th, Finley may be forced to turn his garden back into grass.

Finley started planting the Crenshaw produce patch back in December with the organization he helped create, L.A. Green Grounds, which works to establish gardens throughout South Los Angeles. Finley's fruits and veggies quickly burst into bloom, but in May he received some bad news: City officials issued him a citation for violating city code. Depending on what happens during this Friday's hearing, Finley could be forced to level his garden and replace it with a traditional grass parkway.