The Green Valley Gardeners
A project of Green Valley Gardeners that began January 2014. We signed a long-term, renewable license for the 4.2-acre property
on South La Huerta with the Desert Meadows 1 Property Owners Association (DM1 POA). We have committed club resources to create a
multi-purpose botanical garden at this property and to provide on-going stewardship of this property.
Desert Meadows Park is a community service project of the garden club for the enjoyment all area residents and visitors to the area.
We Get Started
The board of directors for Green Valley Gardeners evaluated the project in 2013.
Would assuming stewardship of the La Huerta property be consistent with our Mission? It was.
Would assuming stewardship help our organization achieve its Objectives?
The potential project easily addressed 2 of our 5 objectives, with potential for more.
* To demonstrate a variety of arid land plants and the conservation of water
* To provide civic beautification for the benefit of all citizens
* In addition, we had a strong demand from our members to establish a second community garden – one more centrally located in Green Valley.
The board decided to contract with Jessie Byrd, a Tucson landscape architect with experience designing the Prickly Park
project for Tucson Cactus and Succulent Society, to propose a design. Jessie met with Green Valley Gardeners leadership and walked the property.
Her first reaction – “this property has lots of potential!” She was quick to identify existing assets – native trees,
view of the Santa Rita Mountains and ‘scale of the space.’ Jessie provided conceptual designs for our consideration.
The design included walking trails, wildlife habitats, demonstration gardens, picnic sites and a community garden.
The Green Valley Gardeners board accepted the concept. We presented it to the DM1 POA and it was approved.
The original plan of the Board was to budget to build out the park according to the design plan
over a 10 year period. However in 2014, we applied for several grants to expedite the build-out.
On August 28th, we received the BEST News: Our grant application to the Freeport-McMoRan Foundation for $116,000 for
the park will be fully funded! We received the check at an award ceremony on September 10th.
Partnering with other non-profits
Foundations encourage and often require partnerships to leverage the dollars they award. The Freeport McMoRan Foundation is one that makes
this a requirement. In our application we identified two non-profit partners.
First, the Community Food Bank and second, PPEP YouthBuild of Tucson an AmeriCorps project that provides GED and job skill certification
to low-income youth. PPEP used the park as their vocation training ‘classroom’ for their 2014-15 class.
This provided us over 2600 hours of volunteer labor to construct many of the park needs. The youth constructed the
30 raised-beds in the community garden, the grape arbor and ramadas for picnic areas.
A resident of our neighbour, Prestige Assisted Living, Lew Denny, came over to the park one Wednesday
morning and socialized with the volunteers. He was a member of the club when it was founded in the 1980's
and was one of the original plot holders at the Sahuarita community garden. He seems to enjoy his visits and we
enjoy hearing his recollections.
GVG volunteers contributed just over 2700 hours for during 2014. All together GVG and non-GVG volunteer
hours have totalled just over 4590 hours for the year.
Some Insights
The board initially approached the negotiations with DM1 POA from a rather myopic perspective – we wanted land for a community garden
for our members. The grant application process of Freeport McMoRan Foundation really opened our eyes to a different perspective.
In order to complete the application we had to answer these questions:
* What would be the benefit for the community?
* How would it provide sustainability for the community?
* How could we leverage the funds by partnering with other non-profits?
These questions helped us realize that Desert Meadows Park was a wonderful opportunity for us to ‘walk our talk’ – our club
logo has the by-line ‘A service club made up of gardeners’ – we are providing our community multiple services by investing
our resources, both funds and volunteer hours, to this project.
In November, 2014, the club held its Annual Luncheon, renamed BBQ/Picnic at the park. Our gardeners enjoyed the fellowship of
members and their guests along with music and great food, and got to admire this our newest labor-of-love.
