South End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust

The South End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust (SELROSLT) is a membership-supported, non-profit organization that owns, protects, and manages 16 community gardens and pocket parks

Pocket park

A pocket park, parkette or mini-park is a small park accessible to the general public. In some areas they are called miniparks or vest-pocket parks....

in the South End

South End, Boston, Massachusetts

The South End is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.-Geography:The South End lies south of the Back Bay, northwest of South Boston, northeast of Roxbury, north of Dorchester, and southwest of Bay Village...

and Lower Roxbury

Roxbury, Massachusetts

Roxbury is a dissolved municipality and current neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was one of the first towns founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and became a city in 1846 until annexed to Boston on January 5, 1868...

neighborhoods of Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. It is a member of the American Community Gardening Association

American Community Gardening Association

The American Community Gardening Association is a non-profit organization of volunteers, professionals and member-organizations working in support of community greening in rural and urban areas across Canada and the United States...

, the Boston Natural Areas Network

Boston Natural Areas Network

The Boston Natural Areas Network , founded in 1977 is a non-profit organization based in Boston, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, which works to identify and protect significant natural areas described as urban wilds and greenways in the metropolitan area.-Mission:The Boston Natural Areas...

, the Land Trust Alliance

Land Trust Alliance

The Land Trust Alliance, originally formed in 1982 as the Land Trust Exchange, is a national conservation organization representing more than 1,700 land trusts across the United States...

, and a partnering grantee of the New England Grassroots Environment Fund

New England Grassroots Environment Fund

The New England Grassroots Environment Fund , headquartered at Montpelier in the U.S. state of Vermont, is a foundation funding environmental initiatives at the local community level. The organization promotes dialogue in open civic forums and promotes social change...

Mission

The South End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust works to acquire, own, improve, and maintain open space for community gardening and pocket parks in the South End and Lower Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston for the public benefit in perpetuity.

History

The Land Trust was established in 1991 with the intent to incorporate and protect eight established community gardens. The existing gardens were owned by a variety of institutions, none of them with long term legal protection. The legal incorporation as a non-profit organization with an elected board composed of neighbors created an entity that was able to partner with The Trust for Public Land

The Trust for Public Land

The Trust for Public Land is a land conservation nonprofit founded in 1972 by Huey Johnson and based in San Francisco, California in the United States. TPL works throughout the United States to conserve land for people as parks, gardens, and other natural places.- TPL Conservation Initiatives :TPL...

to purchase the range of properties from a variety of owners, and set in place a process to use and care for the gardens in perpetuity. Many of the original eight gardens were primarily food producing, helping to augment the budgets of low and moderate-income urban families. Land Trust gardens continue to be places of food production, as well as gardeners growing ornamental plants.

Today SELROSLT holds and operates sixteen community gardens, gardened by approximately 600 gardeners, and accessible to their adjacent neighborhoods. Individual gardens have received awards from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society

Massachusetts Horticultural Society

The Massachusetts Horticultural Society, sometimes abbreviated to MassHort, is an American horticultural society based in Massachusetts. It describes itself as the oldest, formally-organized horticultural institution in the United States...

, the City of Boston, and Horticulture magazine. Three SELROSLT community gardens have been the subject of the nationally distributed WGBH-produced

WGBH-TV

WGBH-TV, channel 2, is a non-commercial educational public television station located in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. WGBH-TV is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service , and produces more than two-thirds of PBS's national prime time television programming...

program The Victory Garden

The Victory Garden (TV series)

The Victory Garden is an American public television program about gardening and other outdoor activities, produced by station WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts, and distributed by PBS...

Membership

Membership is open to individuals and families interested in urban gardening. Each community garden maintains a waiting list. Most individual community gardens have a membership committee which manages the waiting list, works with the garden's leadership committee, and helps orient new gardeners to the garden. Waiting periods vary by garden and there are no statistics available on wait time. Members pay an annual plot fee, and an additional Land Trust membership fee. Costs are moderate, and payable on a sliding fee. Members may vote at an annual meeting, participate on committees, and are required to maintain their plot in a clean and productive state.

Gardening

Plot sizes vary from a small 5' x 9' to larger 14' x 28.' Gardening members come from the immediately adjoining neighborhoods. Individual gardens vary greatly in what is grown and harvested. Located in two diverse urban neighborhoods, a wide variety of food, flowers and plant material is grown based somewhat on ethnicity, ancestry, or if a gardener is a recent immigrant, their home country. Land Trust rules allow individual garderns to grow whatever they choose in their plot as long as it is not grown for commercial sale. Most garderners grow a mix of vegetables and ornamentals. A few of the gardens operate a composting system to convert discarded plant material to soil and fertilizer. Roughly half of the gardens have perimeter borders termed community borders, which are planted with ornamental plants, flowers and small shrubs.

Funding and operations

The Land Trust operates with funds raised through garden plot fees, fundraising activities including the annual South End Garden Tour, and varied other events. Additional funds from private and public sources, via direct grants, have contributed over $1,000,000. Funds have been used to provide water systems, decontaminate soils, to install consistent iron fencing and granite curbing, and to build gazebo community spaces in the local gardens.

Governance

Each of the community gardens elects or appoints a representative to the SELROSLT board. The board elects a president from membership. The president is a volunteer position, focused on day to day operations of the gardens, coordination with the City of Boston and membership. The individual community gardens send plot fees to the Land Trust to pay liability insurance and water service. Individual gardens are intended to be democratically self-governing, and the form of governance varies from garden to garden. Some gardens elect a coordinator, or two coordinators; others elect a leadership committee.

SELROSLT's 16 gardens and parks

Berkeley Street Community Garden
Bessie Barnes Memorial Park
Bessie Barnes Memorial Garden
Dartmouth Pocket Park
Frederick Douglas Intergenerational Garden
Harrison Urban Garden
Lenox-Kendall Community Garden
Northampton Community Garden
Rutland-Washington Community Garden
Rutland's Haven Community Garden
Rutland Green Pocket Park
Wellington Common Community Garden
Wellington Green
Warren-Clarendon Community Garden
Worcester Street Garden
West Springfield Community Garden

External links

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