Truthville Garden
Project Activities
This garden was in collaboration with The Truth Outreach, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to providing people with tools that enable social, economic, health and spiritual wholeness through media and community outreach. The installation attracted 37 participants from the Sustainable Solano and The Truth Outreach networks.
This installation happened during the pandemic while following CDC health and safety guidelines. These guidelines included only having one additional person or social bubble working on-site during one-hour shifts. Due to these constraints, the installation took threee workdays: one day to sheet mulch the garden area, to plant bare-root fruit trees and digging a hügelkultur, a second day to finalize the hügelkultur and build raised beds out of repurposed barn wood, and the final day to fill the raised beds and plant different smaller plants, seeds and vegetables.
Results and Impact
This 2,000 square foot garden is expected to help create food for various groups, including employees and contractors of TruthFM radio station operations, families of soccer coaches and kids who use the site, local church congregants, neighborhood families, clients using the premises for events, and members of Opportunity House (a shelter operated by Vacaville Solano Services). The installation itself brought together people from all age groups, including parents and their young children and friends.
Over the next five years, this garden will create at least 375 pounds of food, which is about 312 meals.
Lessons Learned
Working with the funders of The Truth Outreach was a pleasure. Garden champions Deji and Ebere were open to the ideas we brought to them, and eager to learn about sustainable landscaping and food production. While the installation took half a day longer than anticipated, due to the low number of people who were able to work on the garden at a time, they never lost their welcoming attitude and excitement for the garden.
Learn More
Read more about this project in the blog post below.
