This project grew from collaboration among several community groups including Watertown Citizens for Environmental Safety (WCES), Watertown Community Foundation, Trees for Watertown (TFW), as well as individual catalysts such as Isabelle Jenkins, postgraduate intern to Church of the Good Shepard from the Hope in Action Campaign, and State Representative Jon Hecht. Our long-range goal is to establish a network of 5-6 community gardens in Watertown utilizing public and private spaces to provide a variety of community benefits. This includes provision of healthy produce to the gardeners with a planned share for our two community food pantries. We also plan to demonstrate organic gardening techniques and introduce our neighbors to better choices for their home gardens and lawns. We will strengthen connections between community members and capitalize on the network of environmental and social justice activists in the community. We value aesthetically pleasing and functional destinations for people to walk and bicycle to in town. We want to encourage town residents to think about the value of local agriculture and the necessity of environmental stewardship. Our organization is concerned that children eat more artificial additives and high fat, processed food than ever. This contributes to obesity and diabetes. We want to involve children in the gardens directly so that they are able to grow delicious and nutritious food as well as observe adults caring for the natural environment. The project for which we are requesting funding, will establish the first community garden in partnership with Watertown Housing Authority (WHA) at a vacant housing authority lot during for the 2011 growing season. The lot will accommodate about 24 individual raised bed plots, which will be offered to housing authority tenants first, most of whom are families, and then to neighbors as available. Our master urban gardener and landscape designer, both Watertown residents, will collaborate with WHA staff and residents in early Spring to develop the specific rules and a garden plan. The garden will be organized to meet the practical and aesthetic needs of the individual gardeners but also to provide space for our master urban gardener to demonstrate water conservation, composting, soil building, and organic pest management. Our summer intern will work with children and staff from the Housing Authority's Willow Park Learning Center twice a week for 10 weeks in garden projects, preparing healthy snacks from garden produce and maintaining the compost pile. We will nursery some trees for a collaborating organization, Trees For Watertown. The generosity and enthusiasm of the WHA has been remarkable. They will provide raised beds, soil and soil testing, water, a picnic table and a secure fence. As detailed separately, we want to reimburse our gardening and design professionals for some of the time they put in to developing the garden and developing the rules system and organization that will sustain the garden over many seasons. We are also requesting a stipend for the summer intern to interact with the children and Willow Park staff. Other expenses for supplies including materials, tools, plants and seeds are also detailed. To engage as many people as possible, we will organize two community events. In Spring WCES will sponsor a showing of Dirt the Movie (which we found on the Eat Local Foods Coalition of Maine site). It would be ideal to coordinate this with Earth Day and be able to distribute seeds, seedlings or compost samples. The gardening group will develop a workshop to be held in town in late Summer or Fall to tell the public about our project and educate on composting and organic gardening. To communicate our success, the master urban gardener and landscape designer will star in a public service announcement produced by WCES with the public access cable station to air locally. The gardeners may participate in WCES' semi-annual organic garden tour organized by the Chemical Use Reduction Education (CURE) arm of the environmental task force.