Last week I officially notified the nominating committee of the Fenway Garden Society that I would be running for President of the 2011 board. 

Whenever I tell people about my garden society they titter (yeah, titter — and, yes, it's irritating).  Despite the fact that gardening is not for sissies, the words "garden society" seem to conjure up old ladies in Victorian garb sipping tea among the roses, discussing how best to deal with the blight. 

Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Urban community gardens have a different provenance — they are tied to a different history and politics than estate gardens or even the big public gardens of the mid-nineteenth century — ones like the rambling Emerald Necklace the Victory Gardens overlap.

Like most community gardens, the Victory Gardens started as vegetable gardens — they were originally meant to address scarcity in a time of war, and to boost involvement and lift the morale of those on the home front. 

And while the Victory Garden movement was ostensibly top-down, I would say that the success of the gardens was in their grass roots.  I don't think it's a stretch to say that all community gardens today have an activist element to them.  (Check out the outstanding documentary The Garden for a good example.)

So that's the first thing.

Nor are we a twee little garden tucked into a quiet corner of the city.  We occupy seven acres at a crossroads, have over four hundred individual plots, and a membership in the hundreds that includes folks from all walks of life, from people on the verge of homelessness to merchants and directors of some of the city's most prestigious institutions; from Russian, Chinese, Central and South American immigrants to a blue blood or two; from students to Civil War widows.



Which explains the sometimes perverse pride in the scrappiness of our organization, and the reluctance to professionalize certain of its functions.  But the Fenway is changing and we are a different garden today than we were a mere twenty years ago, when my friends Leo and Iory joined. 

I had dinner with them the other night (in fact we had the last of the sorel from the garden in a delicious soup Leo whipped up).

Leo told me that joining the Fenway Garden Society was Iory's idea.  He said that at the time it was, let's say, a bit scrappier than it is today.  OK, it was a high-crime area in the middle of a rundown part of town.  The fences and gates were mostly absent.

When first established, the Victory Gardens were a seven-acre field that was plowed under at the end of every season.  By the eighties there were individual plots demarcated by low fences.  Over the last twenty years proper fences and gates were installed, and the patchwork of semi-private gardens you see today became the rule.

In the meantime we have also become a 501(c)3 non-profit, though we have an all-volunteer board.  This is a huge step the implications of which aren't always fully grasped by the organization's members.  There is, in fact, a general wariness at becoming "too corporate," by which people mean too focused on funding. 

I don't think that's going to be a real worry anytime soon.  Our organizational capabilities are extremely limited.  But I believe we should explore building an endowment to ensure we have the ongoing and independent capacity to improve our basic infrastructure, and actively partner with other organizations on events and programming to bring in a new generation of gardeners.  We're not talking bazillions here, but enough to keep us up, running, and relevant, while keeping member dues universally affordable.

The outgoing board has been heading in this direction, sometimes more by inertia than will.  And they have not always been able to implement the oversight and transparency mandated in our bylaws, and essential to our continued sense of community. 

Anyone even just casually exploring the gardens will notice immediately that we have a "broken windows" problem.  This is an ongoing issue, and it's one of the first and chief challenges of the incoming board.  How it will be dealt with is a test of organizational skill, because it requires accurate and up-to-date record-keeping, coordination with the Senior VP of the Park and the Board of Section Coordinators in revoking and assigning plots, an efficient renewal and effective recruiting strategy, programming to educate and integrate new gardeners into the community, and measures to address attrition (which is a huuuuge problem).

This is a major undertaking that requires an active network of officers who understand the vital importance of working together all season long.  It's certainly not something that one man can take on by himself.  The current VP of the Park (who is up for re-election and may wish to run for President) is incredibly hardworking, but seems to view the office primarily as a maintenance/groundskeeper position.  And it is that, but not primarily.  It is first and foremost about building and maintaining community.  The community which then maintains the grounds.

Different skill set. 

On the one hand scurrying around putting out fires all by yourself, and often getting so backed up you just let them burn out on their own; on the other cultivating a network capable of putting out fires whenever and wherever they break out. 

We don't seem to have an effective network. 

When the issue has come up, a lack of volunteerism has been blamed.  But again, it is ultimately the responsibility of the board to find effective ways to encourage active participation on all levels, and to follow up with members when they do volunteer. 

One answer to the problem the current board has come up with is to literally outsource our ongoing volunteers activities to student groups looking for volunteer opportunities in the community.  While this effectively addresses the issue of maintaining the grounds and encourages new partnerships in the community (which is wonderful!), it does nothing to build volunteerism within the gardening community itself.

What happens is, we have plenty of volunteers for volunteer days, many from outside the garden society, but for ongoing upkeep, for issues like derelict gardens, broken fences, kicked-in gates, regular maintenance of paths, even issues of personal safety —  all things for which a strong network of "local" rather than centralized organization is necessary — we're lacking. 

People in my section don't know who to go to with these issues.  Normally it would be a section coordinator and then the Area Director — we are told we have one, but that his or her identity is secret to protect them from possible retaliation, an explanation that speaks volumes to the current mindset.  So members take their problems straight to an already overburdened VP of the Park.

What happens from there?  In many cases weeks and months go by without action.  Often gardeners take matters into their own hands — rebuilding gates and fences — but without coordination, we're limited to gestures.  Not knowing the status of the garden, we can't enter and clean it up.  We obviously can't start the revocation process or reassign it.  We have no choice but to wait for the VP of the Park to initiate the process. If there are forty such plots in the gardens (a conservative estimate) it's highly unlikely the VP, working alone, will get to them in a timely manner.

And it doesn't take long for derelict gardens to become favorites of overnight partiers, intravenous drug users, or squatters.  Broken windows.  And just like in neighborhoods with blight, it tends to spread.  We find it harder to recruit and retain gardeners when the plots adjacent to theirs have become public toilets. 

So we have a chronic health and safety issue on our hands that requires real organization and coordination among our entire membership to effectively address.

The answer is clearly to strengthen community.  Our community is our strength.  But again, that takes not only a willingness to reach out, but communication and organizational skills to build and maintain through programs, events, and regular meetings an actual, effective network that can respond in a positive and productive way to the challenges we face. 

A wide and active network and layers of oversight are essential.  Where they are lacking, you get distrust and disaffection.  There's been some talk, for example, that a significant donation to the Garden Society will expedite member requests for plot expansions.  Whether truth or rumor (and assuming the books are accurate, it would not be terribly difficult to check it), the fact that folks are talking about it tells you that transparency and trust are lacking on some level. 

We have proper and acceptable methods of raising funds from what is, on the whole, a very generous member base.  And I'm sure that if this has been suggested as a method of raising funds it's not the result of bad intentions, but a lack of education and oversight.  But even the suggestion of impropriety on our board is cancerous, and corrodes the sense of community we need always to be cultivating.

It is more important than ever that our board understands this and adheres strictly to a code of ethics in everything from member dues to grant applications. We need a board that understands the importance of and strictly supports and adheres to checks and balances among its members. We need a board committed to protocol and oversight as is standard in any organization of our size that is entrusted with collective resources, and one with the commitment and know-how to effectively implement its own bylaws.

I'll admit I have an agenda.  And it's based on a guiding principle: community.

This is my community. I moved to the Fenway to be here, in my community. And the question for me is how do make this a better community.  And everything I do as a gardener, and everything I’ll do as a board member is geared toward finding ways to better my community.

Oh, and one more thing. The "no"s in Mennonno? They stand for "No Bullshit" and "No Drama". 

Now, let's do this.