The 31st Annual American Community Gardening Association Conference August 5 – 8 2010, Atlanta, GA

A Holistic Approach to Building Sustainable and Healthy Communities: The Choice is Yours

This urban agriculture organization has been running as long as City Farmer and has inspired many to get out and grow food in cities. Mike

Excerpt:

Our Keynote Speaker

Dr. Yvonne Butler
Creator of the Sugar-Free School Lunch Program
The results of Dr. Butler’s ‘sugar-free’ school have soared to new heights with higher test scores, fewer disciplinary programs, and fewer weight problems among students.

Community Garden and Bicycle Tours

Clarkston Tour (5 Gardens) – Meet gardeners from Burundi, Bhutan, Somalia, and Bosnia and tour the oldest continually operating community garden in Metro Atlanta.

Decatur (5 Gardens) – Visit the two highest profile community gardens in Metro Atlanta, including one 501-c-3 with paid staff, one city operated, one senior tower garden, one faith based donation garden and one high school garden. Two of these have honey bees!

Henry (4 Gardens) – Learn how a 501c3 created a “fees for services” arrangement with the county council. One emphasizes active senior living, one is for residents of public housing, one is family friendly and one is shared with a church.

Northeast Tour has exceptional esthetic qualities with gardens in city and county parks, a private gated apartment community (operated by a large corporation) and a Horticulture Therapy food garden run by Master Gardener volunteers for people with severe neurological disabilities.

Southeast Tour has a broad range of approaches to community gardening: progressive youth engagement, a mission for disabled adults, an arts community, privately held land with a conservation easement, chickens and goats, and the first community garden in a city of Atlanta Park.

Bike Tour ($20 Fee – to be collected at the conference): The bicycle tour is a street-level experience of a cluster of gardens in the Southeast Tour. The gardens are all within a few miles of each other, so all bike skill levels are welcome. Bikes and helmets provided.

Southwest Tour includes a visit to the Atlanta Community Tool Bank, an innovative approach to community building. We’ll also visit community gardens that have programs for disadvantaged kids, reclamation of abandoned land, and a community garden that moved three times and is better now than ever.

West Tour emphasizes the utilization of community gardens in education. We’ll visit an urban CSA farm that offers classes to the public, three very different and unique schools that incorporate gardening into curriculum, and will swing by a traditional neighborhood garden.

See the conference website here.