Dear Gardeners and Community Members,

What a beautiful summer we are having! Howard Area Community Garden has some news to share about all the exciting projects going on around here.

Katje Sabin, former garden coordinator of HACG, is back in the garden as our beekeeper and HACG is hosting her thriving honeybee colony. We are grateful both for the bees and their keeper!

Bees are not the only non-human animals thriving in our garden. This summer, the Lincoln Park Zoo Conservancy Urban Wildlife Institute is monitoring the wildlife that visits our garden. On their first visit, the wildlife monitors were astonished to find no evidence of rats in the garden. They attribute this to the amazing work of gardener Kim Chaudoir, who single-handedly trapped out a thriving rat colony. We can't wait to see the results of this project, which will tell us how many birds and other non-human animals that visit the garden. See more about this project at: Urban Wildlife Project

The Parkway boxes along Juneway are now completely renovated and repaired thanks to Paul Bick. We are growing food to share with the community. Gardeners extraordinaire, Scott Wenthe and Michael McColly have been planting gorgeous perennial pollinators along the parkway as well. Even better, our community partner Family Matters, through their teen summer program--which this year is focusing on the theme of Operation Beautification--is helping to maintain and water the vegetable boxes and the parkway plantings. 

Katje Sabin hosted a vegetable seedling sale this year to raise money for HACG. She also donated all unsold seedlings to HACG gardeners.  HACG gardener, Stephanie Bravo, also gifted us some gorgeous flowering plants and seeds donated from her workplace, the Chicago Botanical Garden. Thank you for sharing your bounty, Katje and Stephanie!

Howard Area Community Garden hosted several vegetable seedling sales this year--garden Coordinator Molly Doane and garden volunteer, Okie Handke, grew the starts from heirloom seed under lights in the basement of Jarvis Square Pottery before sending them to the greenhouse at Little Spring Farm in Wisconsin to get some real sunlight. Seedlings are provided at low cost to the community and at no cost to low-income gardeners. Unsold seedlings were planted in the HACG Parkway boxes and donated to the Hello Howard Grow-to Give Program. Proceeds from the HACG plant sales defrayed the costs of the new information station--see below!

You may have noticed that Howard Area Community Garden has a beautiful new Information Station on the Hermitage Street side of the garden. Thank you, Paul Bick and Dylan Crow for lending your skills, and to Paul Bick for donating the materials. You can check out the Information Station to find out about volunteer opportunities and events. (Mark your calendars for the 2nd Annual Community Garden Walk on Saturday, August 10. More info coming soon).

Let's face it, there is nothing better than getting our hands in the soil when we have the opportunity. We wish there were many more community garden plots in our neighborhood so that we could garden together in greater numbers. Fortunately, you do not need a garden plot to garden with us. We have many volunteer opportunities. You can join us on our volunteer days or email us at howardgarden@gmail.com for other opportunities. Here are the scheduled volunteer workdays--organized by HACG gardener Stephanie Bravo-- for this season: 

• 7/21: Sunday 2pm-4pm 

• 8/03 Saturday 10am-12pm 

• 8/18: Sunday  2pm-4pm

• 9/7: Saturday 10am-12pm

  9/15: Sunday 2pm-4pm 

    

• Most notably, this season we are expanding the leadership team and 

  thinking about community governance practices. Our current leadership 

  team is: Tammy Besser (Events Committee)  Stephanie Bravo (Workday Coordinator), Kim Chaudoir (Wildlife and Bees), Molly Doane (General Coordinator and Events), Alison Issen, Kendra Long (Events), Michael McColly (Parkway), Scott Wenthe (Parkway and Community Space Coordinator), Amy Wooten. All current gardeners are welcome to join us. 

  Please get in touch at howardgarden@gmail.com if you are interested.