Greening the Neighborhood: Common Ground Garden, Eugene, Oregon

Reader Contribution by Jan Spencer

Just a little back ground. I have been transforming my quarter acre suburban property for 15 years. Grass to garden, passive solar retrofits, edible landscaping, 6500 gallon rain water system, took out my driveway. All that has been great. (see photos at suburbanpermaculture.org) Looking back, I wish I had invited more people to come over for work parties, simply to make the projects a more community building and educational experience

We have a network of green minded people in my neighborhood and have had many work parties. Work parties are a great way to make friends, learn new skills, build community and if its a really good work party, there should be pizza and beer.

For the next set of blogs, I want to profile several impressive examples of greening the neighborhood. These projects are often on public property and often in collaboration with city governments. The ideal for these blogs is for readers to look around where they live and say, hmmm,,,, we could do something like that here. The more homes and neighborhoods going green in these changing times the better! If you have a greening the neighborhood story where you live,,, please comment so others can know about it and please contact me. I might like to follow up and make your neighborhood project the subject of a future blog.

I also plan to approach MEN staff with the idea of having a new regular feature spotlighting grassroots projects that green the neighborhood and community. Please comment on this blog and mention there should be a new blog category for building green community and social transformation.

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