Vedgewater 2024 has put their gardening beds “to bed” for the winter. We had a very successful season of gardening! With 182 plots tended by community members, we were able to provide our community with the opportunity to learn about vegetable gardening, to grow their own organic food, learn about pollinator plants, and more importantly to be involved in our vibrant Edgewater community!
We currently have 232 households on our wait list and nearly 300 on our volunteer mailing list, indicating just how important and valuable the garden is to the community.
We expanded our Care for All program providing hundreds of pounds of fresh produce donated to our various partners who handle public food distribution to our community members in need.
Our monthly work days were well attended by our garden plot members, and also volunteers from the community who did not have plots. One beauty of our garden is the manner in which community members show an interest even if they are not plot members. They walk by, talk to gardeners, ask about how to join and many volunteer their time to help with the tasks. Many immigrants walking by talk about their gardens they had back home and it offers them a moment of nostalgia that brightens their day. It’s these intangibles that contribute to the importance of our community garden!
With Loyola, we hosted students and educators at multiple volunteer days as well as the freshman student service day. Loyola generously offered a new lot adjacent to the garden to expand our offerings and in this new expansion area we had more space for gathering and growing opportunities.
The leaders of the garden worked on better communication with gardeners and created working calendars for watering duties which kept the gardens healthy. We partnered with DePaul University who provided bee hives to help with our garden pollination. This inspired our growing more pollinator plants in the expansion area.
Registered gardeners logged 360 volunteer hours just this year.
Dig In Workshops were offered to community members regardless if they had plots or not. The topics were Worms Belong In the Kitchen – Composting and Vermiculture, Beauty for Your Body, Herbal Spices, Medicine From Your Garden, Getting More Out of Your Garden, Longer – Succession Planting and Creating a Child-Friendly Garden, Bioswales – Perennial Solutions and Tunnels for Stormwater Runoff, Seed Saving To Reduce Costs, Share, Grow From Seeds, Putting Your Bed to Bed. We look forward to providing more educational and free programming in future years. Thank you to our educators: Ma'at, Karen, David, Carmen, and Renee.
We also had many improvements in the garden:
New compost system
Three new picnic tables
Four new wheelchair accessible beds
New shed for tall garden tools
Pergola structure donated by 6018N
70 reconstructed garden beds
Monthly meets for leaders to discuss issues and improvements
Better signage identifying who we are (taken down for winter)
Weekly harvest and food donation
Multi-month CPS internship program
We have many people and organizations to thank for the success for Vedgewater.
Loyola University
Edgewater Environmental Coalition
NeighborSpace
6018 North
48th Ward Office
Edgewater Library Branch
Chicago Community Gardeners Association
48th Ward Streets & Sanitation Team, and Conrad
Edgewater Mutual Aid Network
Chicago Tool Library
Teegan Composting
Soil Ecologies
We look forward to working with these generous organizations next year and to continue with our successful collaboration for continued success for Vedgewater!
Vedgewater Garden Leaders