6th Ward Garden Park

The name of the park with promotional tagline is “6th Ward Garden Park–A Growing Experience Connecting People, Food, and Nature”.

The 6th Ward Garden Park is a coalition of City Parks and Recreation, Helena Community Gardens, Helena Food Share, and 6th Ward Residents.

“The 6th Ward Garden Park, a healthy, consciously designed and managed edible ecosystem, provides 6th Ward residents, the public, and community stakeholders with safe, beautiful, accessible, and enjoyable spaces to meet, learn, play, relax, and to grow and enjoy food. The Park connects to and serves its neighborhood and the City, as well as various communities of interest. It builds community, momentum for ecological, social, and economic revitalization. A functional and effective coalition builds, manages, and enjoys the park.”

Areas Served

The 6th Ward Garden Park will provide community gardens for 6th Ward gardeners with a preference for low-income gardeners. The food producing permaculture provides a recreational and educational experience for the entire city of Helena of food and ecology. The educational outreach of the park will be available to persons throughout the area.

Impact

Initially, the 6th Ward Garden Park Advisory Council will renovate the 6th Ward Park to an attractive garden park operated by volunteer traditional and permaculture gardeners. Conservatively, the garden park will produce 4-8 tons of healthy, local food for those who have the moxy to garden there. About 5% of this food will be donated to Food Share.

The Advisory Council is also developing the volunteers who will sustain the park and provide education and educational opportunities to the community long-term. Other benefits:

• The large community garden will replace the small community garden at Helena Food Share, which may allow their operating facility to expand efficiently at the current site;
• Storm water will be diverted from Gallatin Avenue and spread across the park by a permaculture bioswale to cut city watering costs at the park.
• The park will include playground, community gathering circle, and multi-use shelter.
• The park will have a modest, but real impact on property values and a large impact on the quality of life in the 6th ward.

Project / Needs

It will take four years to complete the park. Each annual phase will also include public education and gardener training, soil improvement and vegetation maintenance, landscaping, infrastructure development, and habitat planting. The four phases are dictated by the succession of planting, maintenance, and trial and error necessary to grow and evolve a mature permaculture.

How Will The Funds Be Used

Funds raised by AFCN event will contribute to the 2017 phase of construction and planting of the 6th Ward Garden Park. They will contribute to completing the list of tasks provided in your “give examples” field. These funds will go to infrastructure, park amenities, and initial planting of the permaculture.