This inspired them to draw a “Thank You” picture to everyone who helped grow them.  It’s been a magical experience for her and her friend to see the development of our gardens over the year we’ve been members.  Once they ate two whole cucumbers, came home and didn’t even want birthday cupcakes — they liked the fresh organic cucumbers more!

So thanks to all the carrot growers!

Jolyn and Jay.  B19

Asha's Drawing (7 y/o)

Asia's Drawing (7 y/o)

Come to one of the above scheduled reorientation sessions  - All are invited!

1. Fill out and sign new contracts for 2012 (required by the Parks Department).
2.  Pay plot rental fees for 2012 by Jan. 30: $35.00.

You can also:

• Meet and visit other gardeners.
• Learn about plans for the coming year.
• Hear about and get involved in current projects.
• Enjoy the outdoors!

Some folks are planning to bring food and refreshment.

Attendance is not required, but we hope everyone can come for ONE of the days.

We will be filming Joy’s compost demonstration to help “seed” the community we are creating around the documentary film “What Are You Growing?”

Saturday, October 8, 2011, 10am-12pm at Festival Beach Community Garden. This class is free and open to the public. Please invite your friends and family to join us for an exciting education session!

Please join us on October 1st for a fall and winter gardening class taught by Rosalie Russell and sponsored by Travis County Master Gardeners Association and the Travis County AgriLife Extension.

Learn about:

• Garden vegetables which only thrive in the cool temperature of the fall and winter.
• General gardening principles and guidelines for protecting plants from usually cool temps will be discussed.

This event is outdoors. Please bring a chair if you wish to sit during the lecture portion of the class.

Saturday, October 1, 2011, 10am-12pm at Festival Beach Community Garden. This class is free and open to the public. Please invite your friends and family to join us for an exciting education session!

Garden Party

June 4, 2011 6:53 pm by: Erika Aguilar, KUT Austin

Gardeners from the Multicultural Refugee Coaliton tend to their plants and plots at the Festival Beach Community Garden. Photo by Hannah Jones for KUT News.

On Saturday, neighbors that share the Festival Beach Community Garden by Town Lake celebrated one year of gardening. The two-acre piece of land is lush with potato plants, onion stems and infant orchard trees. When Kathy McWhorter first started searching for a place to establish a community garden, she remembers this area being a flat piece of green lawn space.

“We are the first community garden to be put in on city park land as part of a new initiative to have community gardens developed on city park land and other land,” McWhorter said.

City staff is identifying other parcels of land that can be used as gardens. This year, the Austin City Council approved water rate reductions for community gardens. Under the new city initiative to expand the number of community gardens, the city will offer the land but it is up to the community to organize and manage it. A non-profit would have to sponsor it and rules set by the city must be followed.

At Festival Beach Community Garden, plots are rented for free to people and organizations. Johnson Doe showed off the potatoes, hot peppers, cucumbers, onion bulbs and other vegetables growing in the ground. Doe runs the Multicultural Refugee Coalition. It’s a non-profit that helps refugees get acquainted with the Austin community. As others at the one-year anniversary party are enjoying the music and food, a small group of refugees are transporting mulch in wheelbarrows and watering the plants. The group has a couple of plots reserved for their clients to grow food their own food at the Festival Beach Community Garden. Doe said the garden gives the clients something to work towards.

“What happens is these people don’t speak English. So it’s just hard for them to get work and so we want them to feel at home and the only thing they can do to feel at home is to get a place to work,” he said.

>> Read or listen to the full story at KUT.org

But the good news didn’t end there. It turned out that East Side Pies serves up some of the best pizza in Austin, with an emphasis on inspired combinations of super fresh, seasonal ingredients, often from local farmers’ markets and East Austin’s own Boggy Creek Farm. They were recently named in a top 10 list of restaurants that buy local produce.

So when they offered to donate pizzas for Festival Beach Community Garden’s first-anniversary event, and they suggested they use our own gardeners’ bounty… our tummies growled as our hearts did a little flip flop.

East Side Pies let us peek behind the scenes as they concocted 10 museum-worthy pizzas, using our gardeners’ donated heirloom, tiger stripe and cherry tomatoes, basil, oregano, thyme, bell peppers, cherry peppers, zucchini, squash, eggplant, onions, jalapenos and serranos, placed on top of their superbly thin crust layered with sauce, cheese, EVOO and an amazing chimichurri made of fresh parsley.

The pizzas were promptly gobbled up by party goers and served as one of the big highlights of the day.

Thank you East Side Pies. You are good cooks, good people, and good neighbors.

We will update our website later today with photos from the event, but in the meantime, here’s a quick “then” and “now.”

1 Year Ago:

Today:

Create a gathering space that brings together diverse neighbors to encourage cooperation, collaboration and friendship.

We take very seriously the “community” part of our community garden. Over the course of our first year, we have made so many friends, worked elbow to elbow in our gardens and communal areas, and shared so much — from information and expertise to veggies from our gardens to laughs and frustrations and even tears. We’ve built such a strong garden community…well, we well up a little just thinking about it.

Thanks to Alberto Martinez, Austin American-Statesman, for these photos, taken in April to celebrate the first calendar year of gardening at Festival Beach Community Garden. We look forward to Saturday’s public party and the friends and faces we will add to our growing community!