Last Days of the White Street Garden

I took these photos a few weeks ago at the corner of White Street and Willis, the former home of the Fair Share Garden or Lions Share Garden.  If I had known that it would be the my last trip to the garden I would have taken more pictures and brought home my Soapwort plant that was still managing to survive.  The garden was lush with wild flowers  and a healthy feeding ground for many birds and insects.  I will never understand why people feel the need to destroy something so beautiful so that they can replace it with a vacant lot.  They even took down the tire swing that the neighborhood kids used to use and the little 'sun' ball on the gnomon for the sundial.  The land was taken over by Daytona State College in a land swap with the Daytona Beach Lions Club.  Unlike many other progressive Colleges and Universities, Daytona State College does not have a garden on it's campus. I was lucky enough to be educated at the University of Washington where daily I enjoyed the large herbal garden on campus.

Beautiful wasn't it? 

This is how Daytona State College left it, utterly flattened.  There are also birds nesting about the mural.  I wonder where they go for their food now?

The flattened the large palm tree that was there even before we planted the garden.  The palm washome to mocking birds and was surrounded by bromeliads. 

Garden ghosts?  Orbs everywhere in this photo looking out towards where the tire swing used to be.

Still signs of life.  A few crash test Aloes survived the trauma.

Not surprisingly, a few irrepressible beach sunflowers.  No doubt those will be found throughout the neighborhood for years to come. 

A timid bloomer.  Not quite all the plants were plowed under.  I hope it makes lots of new seeds to spread around.

Happy Birthday Fair Share and Birth of Lions Share Community Garden

Happy 2nd Birthday Fair Share and best wishes to Joel Tippens as he prepares to relocate Fair Share, his non profit entity to Cattanooga, Tennessee. I'm very happy that Joel will be in a community where he will be rewarded and sustained financially for his urban agriculture work. But I'm sad to see him go, and I'm sad that more of Daytona Beach was not willing or able to support his project.

Moira and I were there 2 years ago breaking ground to install the first raised beds. It's amazing to me that she doesn't even remember the first time she was at the garden. I love this picture that I found of the 3 of us taking a break in the archive...

Joel has "passed the shovel" on to us the remaining active gardeners. It's up to us to keep up the good work.

The future looks exciting from down here.

With lots of help from the college kids on Saturday, we got the water collection barrels aligned on level ground.

Our overflow pond was set in place.

And barrels were interconnected. Thanks for the design work Scott.

We even have a new name for the garden, The Lions Share Community Garden. You can follow our continuing adventures at the garden in our Flickr Group, Yahoo Group, or Facebook Group page.