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The feature below is brought to you by West York Borough Community Garden, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about all of our giving initiatives, please click here. To learn more about WYBCG, please visit their Facebook page: here. Be the roots. West York Pennsylvania is a small borough next to a small city in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Our borough is just one-half square mile in size. Six percent of our population lives in poverty. 14% receive SNAP benefits. We have the second highest crime rate in the County. Our neighbor, York City has the highest. Streets that used to be tree-lined are now bare. Blight abounds. 25% of our population is under the age of 18 and 14% of our population are seniors. Our only grocery store closed more than a year ago. We’re a small town with big problems. What we do have is an abandoned park, the size of a city block, and a new community garden to fill-up with fruits, vegetables, flowering plants, art and environmental education. Founded in 2017, our mission is to provide growing space for families who want to garden but have no yard, families who want fresh fruit and vegetables but have limited access or funds, and to bring beauty to our aging spaces. We want to help share the joy of helping others to those who want to volunteer. We are rich in hope and imagination. To quote our Mayor, we will “be the roots” of this community. The West York Borough Community Garden (a 501c3 organization) began with an orchard - Gala, Honeycrisp and Pink Lady apples. We added Asian pear and fig trees last year. Orchard harvests will be split between direct community donation and a partnership with a local brewery to produce a seasonal cider for fundraising. We built our first raised beds and hope to build ten more this season along with additional beds designed for special needs gardeners. Because we’re located over an old quarry dump, we bring in organic garden soil for all our planting – it’s one of our biggest expenses. We started our composting initiative and we’ve restored benches that were literally falling apart. We’ve done this with less than $2,000 in funding. This year, we’re expanding our partnerships. We’ll be working with our local Girl Scout troupe on a rain barrel project for water conservation. We’ll be working with local seniors on our tire garden to grow vegetables for the senior center lunch program. Our plan is to engage with local artists to bring bright colors and sculpture to the space. A gazebo is planned to use for concerts, outdoor movies, and with some modification, use in the Spring as a greenhouse. In 2020, we hope to begin building our outdoor classroom where local students and teachers can engage with nature and the garden in a hands-on way. Future projects include repaving the basketball court, building a roof and installing solar panels. Adding a roof over the court will expand the use of the space to allow for shaded play in the summer and opportunity to play during inclement weather. The space will also be used for free classes on topics such as gardening technique and canning/preserving what’s grown. To finish that project, we’ll install a rain collection system to capture rain runoff. A garden shouldn’t be just food for the body – it should be food for the soul too. WYBCG applied for a See Beautiful grant so we can paint the raised beds and tires for the tire garden, plant flowering perennials, shrubs and street-side flower beds. We want to plant 100 daffodils around every tree in the orchard to bring pollinators to where we need them in early Spring. A grant from See Beautiful would help us make our project more visible and increase community awareness and ownership of the project. You can learn more about us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WYBCommunityGarden/ Or on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wyb_community_garden/ Written by: Lisa Gross, Founder
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