Update on S.A.V.E.'s 1,000 New Gardens Montana Project

The mission of 1,000 New Gardens Montana is to revitalize neighborhood supported agriculture and a new Victory Garden Movement through acts of citizen volunteers who promote sustainable household vegetable gardening by sharing resources, techniques and information throughout communities.

In 2010, two cities competed to propel the most new gardeners. Missoula’s second Dig Day event was a huge success! So far we’ve turned 14 lawns into what will become productive household vegetable gardens. We mobilized 50 volunteers, comprised of Americorps volunteers, University of Montana students, and Missoula community members to help install gardens across Missoula. Planning for 15 gardens, our list of recipients dwindled to five only two days before the event. Many recipients were unavailable upon follow-up, or reconsidered. Despite the high volunteer:recipient ratio, the Dig Day still lasted five hours, with volunteers working non-stop. The gardens that we did install were each unique and time intensive, so what may have otherwise been a situation of “too many hands in the cookie jar” turned out to be a perfect situation.

In Bozeman, volunteers created 35 household vegetable gardens (our specialty) in backyards across Bozeman and Belgrade. We expanded our project to offer volunteer support to other neighborhood initiatives, including a new community garden (25 plots) downtown, and two 1,000 square-foot plots--one to be shared by 6 families at the Eagle Mount and another for clients of the Gallatin Valley Mental Health Center.

This summer we've begun adapting a Missoula-based program called Coffee to Compost. By July's end, we'll have completed a pilot of the program, which is expected to yield valuable estimates for the amount of coffee grounds we'll accumulate. The pilot should also help us troubleshoot any issues we might encounter with local bean shops before we expand the program to more shops during the school year--when most of Bozeman's coffee is consumed on exam eves!