Need a garden for your home? Or do you want to learn to plant a garden? Maybe you want to show off your garden mastery skills?
Victory Gardens operates on the “pay-it-forward” receive-and-volunteer model. A team of volunteer gardeners and wannabes gathers each week to plant food at various Eugene and Springfield residences.
Each week Charlotte Anthony, Eugene resident and Victory Gardens founder, sends out an email list of destinations to receive a garden, along with the meeting time and place [see below for this week’s destination]. Volunteers provide support based on their own personal schedules and lend a hand when and where they can.
“A team comes to one’s house and plants the garden, including soil amendments, compost, plant starts and seeds, and then the person who receives the garden goes and becomes part of a team for another garden,” says Charlotte. “No garden is too small – indoor and outdoor. Patios and front lawns.”
Victory Gardens is always looking for:
- new gardeners who need help setting up a garden;
- intermediate gardeners who need extra help with their gardens; and
- experienced gardeners to lead a team of five-to-six Victory Gardeners
Since 2007, Victory Garden volunteers were directly responsible for planting about 500 local gardens. Charlotte estimates that almost 2,500 gardens resulted indirectly from the “pay-it-forward” model.
Today Charlotte is on a mission to “change the climate one garden at a time.” She wants to plant as many gardens as possible to “mitigate global warming to allow our children to live.”
The roots of Victory gardens go back to World War I and II when gardens were planted at homes in the United States and other countries to supplement the public food supply.
To request a garden, volunteer, or subscribe to Charlotte’s weekly email distribution list, call 541.653.0149 or send an email.
NOTE: The next Victory Gardens team gathering will be this weekend, starting on Friday, June 12. According to Charlotte, volunteers are welcome to participate as their schedules allow:
This weekend we will be planting a 1.5 acre field with tomatoes, beans and winter squash, starting Friday morning at 10 a.m., going through until 4 p.m. for three days on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The address is 28614 Hillaire Street. Please call Charlotte to carpool.
We expect to begin harvesting in August. We invite participants to a share of the harvest. What is left over will be given to Food for Lane County.
This project is a partnership with the newly formed Abundance Alliance.
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