How can one small project create resilient communities?
Ithaca-based conservationist Betsy Keokosky has the answer.
Many of us remember the COVID-19 pandemic: the isolation, the fear, the heightened longing for community. Like many others, Keokosky and the rest of the Ithaca Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) sought to nurture community connections amidst the chaos.
Together, they created “Project Abundance”, a community garden in Ithaca’s Northside neighborhood. Keokosky recalls: “I thought of the word ‘abundance’ because it was such a different feeling from ‘pandemic lockdown’. It was something to make people feel better. The wonderful thing about gardening is you grow plants; you sow seeds; you are always working with things that multiply […] It was an attempt to do what little we [the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)] could to involve people around us in gardening.”
To launch their initiative, the group requested funds from Sustainable Finger Lakes’ Neighborhood Mini-Grant (NMG) program. Their grant partially funded several raised garden beds outside the Thirdstreet Meeting House.
Tended by Keokosky and her colleagues, Project Abundance offers opportunities to experience the transformative nature of gardening – pun intended. In fact, community members can take home numerous crops, herbs, and flowers from the raised flower beds. Keokonsky finds that, “It’s just fun to see people interact with the garden. It feels like a small thing, but it’s a big thing in the eyes of a lot of people.”
To Keokosky’s surprise, the garden has lasted about five years. Now, she “would love to have better signage and posted information on taking care of plants and the soil […] and hoped to create this into more of a teaching platform in addition to a sharing platform.”
To her, Project Abundance remains relevant in today’s political climate: “Where people are getting less money from SNAP; the idea of expanding the environmental experience even in something small, like walking by a garden and being able to pick something from it; it makes people smile, which is so important. In today’s environment, it’s important to find things that make you smile.”
Do you want to start a community project? Apply for a Neighborhood Mini-Grant with Sustainable Finger Lakes today: https://sustainablefingerlakes.org/neighborhood-mini-grant-program/
