Tucked into one corner of the beautifully renovated Chapman Park is a small space destined to have a large impact: the Chapman Park Community Garden. Chapman Park sits on three acres adjacent to the Dorothy F. Johnson Center in the heart of the Chapman neighborhood.
A few years ago, the Chico Area Recreation District (CARD) received funding through California's Proposition 68, the California Drought, Water, Parks, Climate, Coastal Protection, And Outdoor Access for All Act of 2018. That pool of money provides grants for projects which, among other things, “develop future recreational opportunities, or enhance drought tolerance, landscape resilience, and water retention.”
The grant proposal included an educational component: specifically, learning about healthy food and how to grow and prepare it through the development of a community garden. And that is where the UC Master Gardeners of Butte County (MGs) entered the picture. Parks Director Scott Schumann approached the MGs about partnering on planning, developing, and using the proposed garden area for education. Project details were specified in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which stated that MGs would use the garden space for teacher and student education as well as for classes aimed at community members. CARD looks forward to hosting garden camps for youth, classes for adults, and seeing the garden come alive with community use and educational opportunities for all to enjoy.
Back in 2018, Master Gardener Joyce Hill began helping to develop the MG Living Labs program, which teams MGs with local schools to teach Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) through gardening. These Standards advocate for science education that encourages kids to experience and explore the interconnected nature of science, technology, and engineering in real world situations.
The MG Living Lab group was instrumental in designing the Community Garden and bringing the MOU to completion in July of 2023. Then the work could begin! The Living Lab crew, along with design assistance from Landscape Architect Greg Melton, CARD personnel, and over 50 volunteers from the Chico Noon Rotary Club, got busy constructing the new space. In one very busy six-hour day the Rotarians laid down about twenty cubic yards of soil and ten cubic yards of decomposed granite, constructed all the boxes for raised beds, installed steel edging, and built a sink space for handwashing and harvesting!
The area was developed with an imaginative use of space to include as many raised beds as possible. The intent was to create a Model School Garden Living Lab to train educators and to use in real-life experiments for the Living Lab teaching modules. Approximately half of the beds are slated for educational purposes and the other half are devoted to neighborhood community gardeners. The garden area is fenced, but not locked, and is accessible to all.
Within the fenced area, twenty variously shaped raised beds are clustered along paths of hard-packed decomposed granite. Four of these beds are ADA compliant, and one is reserved for a special lesson on the Three Sisters (see below). A large garden shed sits on a raised foundation, and along one side of it a sink and stainless-steel counters have been installed for nutrition education and food preparation.
The Three Sisters: Native peoples across the Americas planted The Three Sisters (corn, squash, and beans) together. This resourceful planting method ensures plant health and conserves precious water; the combined foods supply healthy nutrition and a complete protein. In the Chapman Park Community Garden, MGs and students will plant seeds for popcorn, pumpkin, and shell beans in April. The lesson will include the background story of the Three Sisters. When the kids return to school in the fall, they will harvest the bounty and prepare a soup from a recipe that includes these three ingredients.
1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)
2. Developing and using models
3. Planning and carrying out investigations
4. Analyzing and interpreting data
5. Using mathematics and computational thinking
6. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering)
7. Engaging in argument from evidence
8. Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
For details of how the Master Gardeners' Living Lab program addresses these eight practices, see: Get Outside: Environmental Education for Kids and From School Gardens to Outdoor Science Labs.
In June 2024, the first educational training took place in the Chapman Park Community Garden. The topic was Seeds and Worms, and there were approximately 15 participants from the Butte County Office of Education and other schools in our region, including Yuba City. In addition to its use in training school educators, this space can be used to train new MGs in the Living Lab principles and to train presenters involved in the Master Gardeners Public Workshop Series, which takes place each Fall and Spring.
Community Beds: The garden beds reserved for community members are meant to demonstrate what can be done in home gardens. Community education classes are planned to coincide with the seasons (for example, seed starting in early spring). In addition, Chapman school will use the gardens for field trips. Other goals for community education include using the garden to teach science to those for whom English is their second language, and as a garden camp where kids can explore cooking and crafts.
The Chapman Park Community Garden had its Grand Opening about one year ago. A real labor of love, the creation of this community garden involved collaboration with several government entities and many volunteers from throughout the community. Living Lab educator Joyce Hill summed up the broad vision of the park recently, stating that she could “see the impact that these gardens have on passersby – young and old -- in the neighborhood is where it's happening. We come to them instead of them coming to us.”
UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu or leave a phone message on our Hotline at 530-552-5812. To speak to a Master Gardener about a gardening issue, or to drop by the MG office during Hotline hours, see the most current information on our Ask Us section of our website.
A vacant lot on a residential street is a common sight that goes unnoticed, except when the vacant lot is repurposed and transformed into a community garden. Research shows that community gardens offer a host of benefits for neighborhoods, including improvement of the physical and mental health of patrons, creation of community partnerships and educational opportunities, provision of fresh, locally grown food, and strikingly, reduction in neighborhood crime.
Use of the formerly vacant lot that is now Kentfield Gardens is the gift of a neighborhood resident who owns the lot and lives across the street. This generous individual even pays for the water used for the garden. Funding for improvements to the property (like the covered seating area and outdoor kitchen) as well as ongoing maintenance comes from donations and grants.
Wendy LeMaster, who has a BA in microbiology from CSU Chico, oversees the youth programs at Kentfield Gardens and has volunteered there since its inception. In the beginning her hope was “to provide kids with an opportunity to learn gardening skills while enjoying each other's company in an outdoor environment, which allowed them to socialize after a long period of time when they weren't able to, due to the pandemic.” Since then, she says, the program called Kentfield Kids has expanded and become “a community for parents, friends, family and little ones to come together and enjoy nutritious foods, share recipes, gardening techniques, giggles and more.”
LeMaster says that GROWN encompasses much of what she had already been doing at Kentfield, with a few changes: “I've modified my program to reflect a hybrid of the Teen Group and our Young Bud group, providing an hour of mentorship opportunity for our teens to work with our younger gardeners. Each group still has an hour of fun activity focused on their age group, and as always, this program remains free and families are still welcome to join us. The only other thing that's changed is now I get to bring these garden programs to schools throughout the county…. GROWN is a Butte County Local Food Network Project, which has been made possible by a generous grant awarded to BCLFN through the county, and I'm excited to see what we can accomplish.”
The Butte County Local Food Network lists eight community gardens on its website. Among them is Vecino Garden in Chico, located at 1535 Laburnum Avenue in the backyard of a private residence. This 1/3 acre property contains garden beds, fruit trees, a greenhouse, a neighborhood composting center, and a shaded seating area.
As of January 1, 2022, California has a new, statewide mandatory organic waste collection law aimed at reducing methane emissions by diverting organic waste from landfills (SB 1383). The county of Butte has a year and a half to develop a plan to implement the law, but Vecino Garden is already teaching and promoting neighborhood composting, funded by a grant from CalRecycle implemented through California Alliance for Community Composting.
According to Caitlin Dalby, Executive Director of the Butte Environmental Council, neighborhood gardeners rent plots in Oak Way Garden for 50 cents per square foot, paid to the City to cover the cost of water. The yearly cost of a plot 25 by 25 feet is about $312 per year; a plot 15 by 15 feet is about $112/year, and the garden always has a waiting list.
Dalby says the garden was created to enable people to grow fresh food and to promote urban gardening as part of a healthy lifestyle. In addition, Oak Way Garden offers a composting program through Drop in the Bucket Bicycle Powered Compost Service. The service picks up compostable food scraps from nearby neighborhoods and brings the materials to Oak Way Garden via bicycle for composting at the garden.
How many more unused plots of land in Butte County could be transformed into productive gardens? The Butte Environmental Council hopes to locate properties in other neighborhoods for additional community gardens. And, Dalby says, the Council is also involved in a wide range of projects including tree planting, recycling, composting, K-12 educational outreach and coalition building.
Consensus about the value of community gardens continues to grow. A 2020 big-picture review of 45 studies conducted by researchers at Cornell University concluded that “properly designed and maintained outdoor green space (including community gardens) has the potential to reduce violent crime and gun violence, to make communities safer and keep residents healthier” (Green space can reduce violent crime - Neuroscience News).
For more information, see the following resources:
Project for Public Spaces: Beyond Food: Community Gardens as Places of Connection and Empowerment (pps.org)
Butte County Local Food Network: Butte County Local Food Network (bclocalfood.org)
Butte Environmental Council: Butte Environmental Council (becnet.org)
GROWN: Growing Resilient Optimism With Nature – Butte County Local Food Network (bclocalfood.org)
UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu or leave a phone message on our Hotline at (530) 538-7201. To speak to a Master Gardener about a gardening issue, or to drop by the MG office during Hotline hours, see the most current information on our Ask Us Hotline webpage.
