When and where is the Gathering?

March 7th, from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm (Doors open at 8:30 am, Welcome kicks off at 9:30 am)

West Town Academy

534 N Sacramento Blvd, Chicago, IL 60612

(Across the street from the Center for Green Technology)

 
The 3rd Annual Spring Gathering of the Chicago Community Gardeners Association will highlight the most powerful resource available to Chicago’s gardeners: each other. You are formally invited both to bask in the benefits gathered by your fellow gardeners and to become part of this important team.

REGISTER HERE

What will happen at the Gathering?

There will be lots of action to pack into the 4-hour conference, all centered on sharing and eliciting creative approaches to common community gardening challenges and opportunities. Based on gardener feedback, we’ll continue the tradition of holding an array of expert-facilitated workshops. We’ll also have a garden gear raffle, and get a tour of the CCGA website. All that plus a light lunch.

Exactly what gardener-led workshops are you offering this year?

Here are the topics:

• Creative Community Building in Community Gardens
  A healthy vibrant community garden is one where people feel involved, engaged, and joyful, whether they are gardeners or not. Community gardens are ideal places for communities to gather for fun, for social justice, for fellowship. To think outside the flower box, come to this session where community gardeners will share creative ways they have activated community gardening space beyond gardening.
• Community Gardens as Message Sites for Soil and Water Security
  The United Nations General Assembly designated 2015 for yearlong soil celebrations, as a way to increase understanding of the importance of soil for food security and essential ecosystem functions. Join this session to discuss how community gardens are urgent and essential social places for understanding the importance of soil and water in everyday life. Community gardeners can leverage community gardens as important dissemination stations for messaging the crucial role that soil and water play in global health.
• Building Garden Structures
  This session walks participants through building trellises and compost bins in a unique, hands-on way. Participants will build these structures and learn about their usefulness in the garden.
• Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist
  Fruit trees, berry bushes, brambles and more. Learn how to apply the basic principles of permaculture to create an edible perennial landscape in your community garden. Often referred to as “forest gardening” or “food forests”, panel presenters will discuss how these principles are being applied to private, small backyards, to community gardens in Chicago vacant lots, and to large school campuses to create lush, bountiful, and low maintenance gardens
• Digging in – Transforming Garden Conflict into Constructive Growth
  Conflict in a community garden can be disheartening, especially when the words “community garden” strike up images of everyone working together in harmony. However, conflict is a natural part of relationships and can be quite transformative. This interactive session will explore creative approaches to transforming conflict in which we view conflict as a valuable opportunity to grow and increase our understanding of ourselves and others. The session will offer resources that can hopefully strengthen and build not only your garden team, but other teams in your life, as well. Narrative mediation is a resource that helps us think of conflicts as a story and opens possibilities to growing new stories of relationships we prefer. Appreciative Inquiry provides a shift from traditional problem solving to envisioning possibilities for the future based upon appreciating and valuing what we are doing well. These approaches do not ignore conflict or problems, but rather recognize conflict as a desire for something else. This workshop will be facilitated by Kristin Bodiford, who teaches in both the Masters of Conflict Resolution and Graduate School of Social Work programs at Dominican University
• Spring Preparation and Planting Tips
  Spring is an exciting time- seeds are started, soil warms up, garden teams come together. This session explores the ways in which gardeners can kick off spring, whether by seed starting, garden clean up, or knowing how to get a volunteer crew lined up for a big work day.

Conference Agenda (tentative)

8:30 am- Doors Open, Check In, and Last Minute Registration Begins

• Receive name tag and raffle number for Garden Gear Raffle
• Sign up for two workshops [LINK]. Each workshop will be included in both sessions.
• Sign up to be on one of CCGA’s action committees (next formal CCGA meeting set for April 11, 2015 @ the Center for Green Technology)
• Surf the Chicago Community Gardening Association Website in the Computer Classrooms

9:30 am- Welcome from Interim CCGA Steering Committee

10:00 am to 10:50 am – Networking Workshops Session One

11:00 am to 11:50 am- Networking Workshops Session Two

12:00 pm – 1:30 pm – Lunch, Exhibits, Raffle (raffle tickets pulled at 12:30 — must be present to win), Neighborhood Networking/ Alliancing

What has CCGA done since last year’s Gathering?

Tons! In addition to the Gathering, we held seasonal workshops, distributed thousands of free perennials and bulbs, and more, helping hundreds of gardeners make their dreams grow. Check out the full list of our 2014 accomplishments.

This sounds great! Sign me up! How do I register, and how much does it cost?

Please register online (insert link to google form) for this conference by March 1, 2015 to reserve your space. Entrance fee to this conference is on a sliding scale — please pay what you can (recommended donation is $10, to cover lunch cost).

Is there any other way I can contribute?

Sure! We’re a volunteer-run organization, and we need you. The Steering Committee invites you to volunteer to give CCGA a hand during the entire year — to help with the workshops, plant giveaways, and event organizing, and to suggest sites and activities. We’ll be organizing volunteers at the March 7th gathering and will also soon accept volunteers at the website.

The 3nd Annual Conference of Chicago’s Community Gardeners will be a day for connecting, learning, sharing ideas, and working together to grow strong roots for the future of community gardening in Chicago. Space is limited, so please register early. We hope to see you there!

Sincerely,

The CCGA Interim Steering Committee