Contribute to Easton’s Urban Recycle Garden!

Nurture Nature Center in Easton, PA, is a dynamic center for community learning that uses science, art and dialogue programs to get the community talking and thinking critically about local environmental risks. Since its opening in 2011, NNC has hosted thousands of visitors for its programs, including shows on its noted Science on a Sphere exhibit. NNC’s newest project, the Urban Recycle Garden, is a chance to bring the community together to create a new exhibit that will help local residents to grow food and transform their own urban spaces.

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What it is: NNC’s demonstration garden will use recycled and found materials to demonstrate growing techniques for urban areas (walls, balconies, small paved spaces), so that people can learn how to grow their food and/or beautify their urban space. The techniques demonstrated will be low cost and easy to replicate. This garden will be an exhibit at the center in downtown Easton, Pennsylvania.

Funds from this Kickstarter campaign will be used to create the Urban Recycle Garden in the rear of their building along the Pine Street Alley. Specifically, funds will be used 1) to purchase any plants, tools, and materials needed for the garden, 2) to buy art materials, such as mosaic tiles, to create beautiful recycled growing containers, 3) to purchase a Rainwater Hog (water collection tank), and 4) to develop and print educational signage for the garden and to produce how-to sheets that can be handed out and posted on the website . Any funds raised beyond $8,000 will be used to expand the project to the unused rooftop (pictured below).

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What they hope to accomplish: Urban Recycle Garden will not be a typical green roof or urban garden. Instead, it will demonstrate growing techniques that people can implement in their own living space, no matter how small. This project will help urban residents and local business create a greener and more beautiful community, one container or trellis at a time!

Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Who they are: NNC has grown and developed in response to the needs of the community and was designed by and for community participation. Nurture Nature Center is located in Easton, Pennsylvania, a small urban community of about 25,000 people. Nurture Nature Center has a small staff, but is committed to sharing what they learn in Easton. Through partnerships with other organizations, programming, educational materials and approaches to community engagement on environmental risk, topics have been shared with museums and communities throughout the country. The Urban Recycle Garden is NNC’s most recent effort to create intelligently designed, community-driven programming and exhibits that can help the community respond to critical environmental needs such as access to fresh food.

NCC is also acting as a sub-awardee under the Sustainable Communities Grant to develop a Fresh Food Access Plan (FFAP) for the Lehigh Valley.  The FFAP will include both an Assessment Report of the current state of the Lehigh Valley food economy and a strategies plan to improve this economy in the future.

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Small urban spaces are not often considered places for growing things. With this project NNC hopes to change this mentality by introducing techniques that require little space and are also less intensive and therefore many times more practical for everyday people than larger scale gardening. By creating this Urban Recycle Garden, NNC is making a commitment to maintain it year-round and has already set aside staff time to make sure they can meet this challenge. NCC also plans to incorporate it into current programming for school and community groups as one of the primary exhibits.

Follow this link to make a donation to their Kickstarter account – only a few days left to contribute!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/urbanrecyclegarden/nurture-nature-centers-urban-recycle-garden