Wet work, Mayor visits, Serenity wins

Videos by QGI'er Craig Cannon

Pictures contributed by Elizabeth Skow and Mary McClure

Young gardener writes about her community

The entire Quesada Gardens community is so proud of Serenity Williams who was presented with a National Gardening Association youth award at the Quesada Gardens Initiative event with Mayor Lee on March 13th.  Serenity gardens at the Bridgeview Teaching & Learning Garden, and wrote this essay:

My Community Garden

by Serenity Williams

February 2012

In my neighborhood garden we are planting food for everyone in our community.  The garden is colorful and has healthy snacks.  The healthy snacks are fruits and vegetables like strawberries, squash, cilantro, mint and apples.  The goal of our garden is to be able to give food to people who don’t have much or just to give good healthy food.  This garden I help in is shaped like a rectangle and its right outside of my home.  Inside our garden there are stones to walk on and different levels.

The role I play in the garden project is planting seeds and watering everything in our garden to keep the plants healthy. I spend an hour and a half in our community garden every week.  The good things that our garden has done are that it has grown good healthy food that we have eaten.

Environmental education is important because natural food is really good for the body instead of candy.  My efforts helped to care for the environment because people can just walk to our garden instead of using gas to go to the grocery store and spend money.

Quesada Gardens gets national attention

"The Quesada Gardens Initiative has helped to transform the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood," said San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee at a special dedication event on Tuesday, March 13th in the heart of Bayview.

The mayor visited as part of GRO1000 San Francisco, a national initiative that made awards to five U.S. cities.   

Representatives from The U.S. Conference of Mayors, ScottsMiracle-Gro, Plant A Row for the Hungry, the National Gardening Association, the Garden Writers Association and Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens also spoke. Locals Annette Smith, QGI founding gardener) and Jeffrey Betcher, QGI organizer, represented Quesada Gardens Initiative, welcoming the Mayor and other guests.

The ceremony included the presentation of a National Gardening Association youth gardening award to Serenity Williams who lives on Bridgeview Drive and gardens in the Bridgeview Teaching & Learning Garden.

Serenity Williams smiles with neighbor Mary McClure who works (and plays) with her at the Bridgeview Garden.

Beginning at 7am, about 50 Quesada Gardens residents and volunteers from ScottsMiracle-Gro and Lowes weeded, pruned and spread mulch throughout the showcase Quesada Garden. 

The San Francisco GRO1000 event is the first of several public installation events being held in the U.S., Canada and Europe in 2012. 

More national attention: New York Times profiles 5800 Third

A March 13th NYTimes article by Barbara Tannenbaum acknowledges that the economic boom years stopped just short of Bayview Hunters Point.  The article also sites mixed use development, specifically 5800 Third, as an indication that better days have finally arrived.

  

SF Housing Director Olson Lee is quoted as saying, "This development proves that economic diversity and market-rate housing can work in the Bayview."

   

See the article online. 

Quesada Gardens and SF win national award

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee accepted one of five 2012 GRO1000 Gardens and Green Spaces Awards at the U.S. Conference of Mayors' winter meeting in Washington, DC yesterday. The award benefits the Quesada Gardens Initiative and its effort to address the social environment alongside the physical one through citizen empowerment and grassroots involvement.

The award is part of a partnership program of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the ScottsMiracle-Gro Company, and includes up to $10,000 worth of products from ScottsMiracle-Gro.  It recognizes "cities for the creation of innovative public gardens and green spaces, and recognizes mayoral stewardship in the development of urban greenscapes," according to a U.S. Conference of Mayors' press release issued yesterday.

San Francisco and Quesada Gardens Initiative are one of five city and project partnerships to receive the 2012 award.  The winners were "selected by a panel of former mayors and national garden experts from a pool of more than 80 applicants," according to the press release.

The other winners were Baltimore (Upton Edible Garden), Columbia South Carolina (Greystone Blvd. Beautification Project), Cleveland (Urban Agriculture Innovation Zone), and Corpus Christi (Lindale Park Community Garden).

Quesada Gardens Initiative is an innovative community-building effort in San Francisco's Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood.  The grassroots organization is respected for the creation of community and backyard gardens, public gathering spaces, public art, and other projects that residents envision and implement for themselves.