In The Field: Interviewing the president of the American Community Garden Association
Want to start an urban garden? Farmer D has your contact: Bobby Wilson, the president of the American Community Gardening Association. The organization works to create fresh gardens in urban areas and in the inner city. As Wilson says -- right before giving out his personal email address! -- his group is "off the chain". (Nick Scott/MNN)
Read the transcript
Farmer D: I’m very, very excited to have the President of the American Community Garden Association, Bobby Wilson, with me, right here. Bobby, tell us a little bit -- you’ve got a lot, so tell us a lot about what you’re doing to help pollinate the local good food movement.
Bobby: We’re going to be working real closely with people from across the United States and Canada, aiding them in developing sustainable urban gardening programs in our inner cities.
Farmer D: Nice.
Bobby: So that we can maintain and sustain our green space and teach people how to grow their own fresh vegetables on small tracts of land for a long period of time.
Farmer D: Is this the most exciting time of your career, right now, for what you’ve been doing?
Bobby: Well, it’s, it’s six days a week. You know, today is Saturday. It’s six days a week. It’s Monday through Saturdays and sometimes on Sundays, trying to keep up with the demand of those people that are requesting assistance in trying to learn how to grow their own vegetables. But above and beyond that, we’ve been getting calls from across the country, from newspapers and magazines. In other words, as the young folks would say, it’s off the chain, right now, and someone, somebody, somehow needs to get onboard and understand the importance of the work that we’re doing. If we are able to grow our own fresh veggies on small tracts of land, we can take trucks off the road. We can deal with the contamination that we’re having within our food system, because it will be more localized. And above and beyond that, people can have access to fresh grown, local vegetables right there in their own community. It’s therapeutic. It’s exercise. It’s building self-esteem in people, and the list just goes on, and on, and on.
Farmer D: Which is why there’s probably so much interest in it. People are starting to wake up to all the benefits. Now, if somebody wants to start a community garden, where do they go to get resources and information?, What’s the website for the American Community Gardening Association?
Bobby: If somebody in this area or across the country wants to start a community gardening, as President of the American Community Gardening Association and coordinator of the Atlanta Urban Gardening program, I’ll give you my personal email address, and you can email me, and depending upon your needs and what you want to do there, what you want to do, you can email me at bobbyw@uga.edu, or you can call me in my office at area code 404-762-4087, and we will put you on the right track, in terms of getting your program up and running, and we will give you the tools and the instruments that’s necessary to make it sustainable over a long period of time. Not starting a garden today and then dying tomorrow, but so that this gardening will be there long after you are gone. So, generations behind you will be able to benefit from this community garden. So, give me a call, email me, and let me know.
Farmer D: Don’t call him in the next couple of hours or the next couple of days.
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