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Background

Desert Harvesters is a nonprofit organization based in Tucson, Arizona, which promotes local food production by encouraging the native, food-bearing shade trees such as Velvet Mesquite. Desert Harvesters was initiated by Brad Lancaster, author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond. One of the key success stories of this movement can be experienced in the Dunbar/Spring neighborhood, which is bordered by Speedway Blvd to the north, Stone Avenue to the east, Sixth Street to the south and the Union Pacific railroad and Main Avenue to the west.

Since 1996, more than 1,200 trees have been planted in Dunbar/Spring thanks to an annual tree-planting program and residents’ participation, including Mesquite, Palo Verde, Acacia, Hackberry, Ironwood and Desert Willow trees. The trees are planted in planting areas along the sidewalks and traffic circles. A key part of the street improvements has been the installation of traffic circles. Each traffic circle is taken care of by the residents living at the corner, growing various edible plants with street runoff. Some of the streets such as 6th and 9th Avenue are now filled with vegetation and large shade trees. The trees, which are purchased in five-gallon tubs for $8 each, come from Trees for Tucson, a local nonprofit program (Innes 2010).

Besides using trees which promote food production, Desert Harvesters’ also creatively found a way of harvesting the rainwater—by cutting out a part of the curb and creating a water-catching basin around the native plants. As a result, the planting palette and the rainwater harvesting made the most of the desert climate of Tucson, which gets about 12 inches of rain per year.

Desert Harvesters holds many events to encourage public participation and to educate local residents on how to harvest and process their produce. Since the organization purchased a hammer mill in 2003, they host an annual milling event, helping communities’ process mesquite flour. At the Dunbar/Spring breakfast, they proudly serve mesquite/whole-wheat pancakes made with all organic, local ingredients. The mesquite flour is made from native Velvet mesquite pods hand picked by Desert Harvesters around Tucson – with most of the pods picked from trees planted within the Dunbar/Spring neighborhood. The Desert Harvesters website also provides manuals for water harvesting, guides for eating native plants and recipes for cooking (visit http://www.desertharvesters.org for more information).

Lessons Learned
Potential Benefits:

• Creates a “mesquite guild,” a small community of plants and animals. Underneath a mature mesquite tree, plants that need nitrogen benefit from the nitrogen-rich mesquite and the shade it provides. The mesquite guild attracts wildlife, such as native birds that provide fertilizer and reseeding. Lancaster says having trees shade up to 75 percent of a street's surface can cool summer neighborhood temperatures by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (Innes 2010).
• Provides a local food source, including fruits and flowers from native trees.
• Boosts the local economy:The Mesquite Milling Fiesta and Mesquite Pancake Breakfast at the Dunbar/Springs community garden attract tourists from out of town. In addition, individuals have discovered they can earn money by using the locally-produced ground flour in baked goods that are sold at farmers’ markets and at other outlets.
• Builds community through public events, such as tree planting and milling, providing more opportunities for meeting and getting to know neighbors. People also take more responsibility for care of the neighborhood.
• Educates community members about native and edible plants, harvesting rainwater and tree planting. The Desert Harvesters provide educational materials and annual workshops for beginners.

Potential Issues:

• Neighborhood buy-in: Community participation is important to implementing the changes and maintaining the plants on the street.
• The city’s support: Cutting curbs and installing traffic circles require the city’s permission. Planting of native species should also be encouraged through regulation.
• Curbside parking: Curbside gardens should be designed carefully so that the gardens are not trampled when residents enter and exit parked vehicles.

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Background

The community garden on Quesada Avenue extends from Third Street on the east to Newhall Street on the west. It is located in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, a disadvantaged neighborhood in the southeastern part of San Francisco. The food is primarily grown on the median strip in Quesada Avenue, which is approximately 600 feet long and 20 feet wide. There is one 20-foot wide two-way road, including one parking lane, on the south side of the median and one 20-foot wide cul-de-sac on the north side. The cul-de-sac and the median were constructed to address changes in elevation. The block is constructed against a hill. The two lanes of Quesada Avenue followed the contours of the land, leaving the median in the middle.

The designated traffic speed on Quesada Ave is 15 mph. The traffic is slower in the cul-de-sac section of the road and a little higher on the through section of the street. The average daily traffic volume on Quesada Avenue at 3rd Street is about 667 vehicles westbound and 662 vehicles eastbound per day (San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency 2010).

The Quesada neighborhood was an unsafe place to live because of drug dealers and crime. There were many vacant houses and abandoned vehicles on the strip. Bayview-Hunter’s Point was deficient in environmental health assets, such as full-service grocery stores and safe public parks (San Francisco Department of Public Health 2006). In 2002 when Karl Paige and Annette Young Smith started the garden on the street median, the neighborhood began to change to a safer, healthier place. The street median had been a dumping ground for car parts, mattresses and other jetsam. This inspired the residents to form the Quesada Gardens Initiative, a grassroots, community-building movement that illustrates the possibilities of transforming a blighted neighborhood into a healthy community (Quesada Gardens).

Quesada Gardens Initiative

Community engagement is key to the success of the project. The Quesada Gardens Initiative (QGI), with about 30 residents considered as co-founders, shows the trend toward local, comprehensive approaches to sustainable social and environmental movements. QGI is a local change strategy created and led by the local residents. Karl Paige, one of the co-founding gardeners, passed away in 2007, but this grassroots movement did not stop. Annette Young Smith remains the Chair of QGI’s Board of Directors. Neighbors have developed various projects, including the Founders’ Memorial Vista, food and floral gardens, public art projects and events that increase community participation. Under QGI, residents have created nine community gathering spaces, 12 backyard gardens, two major murals and a stream of popular events. While the most efficacious food production happens in the over 20 large backyard gardens and the community projects devoted to food production, such as the Bridgeview Teaching and Learning Garden, QGI has generated social cohesion through the development of the median strip on Quesada Avenue. This has resulted in a symbol that resonates with those interested in urban agriculture, and a physical hub that supports food production throughout the QGI network of projects (Betcher 2011).

QGI settled on resident-led design and implementation principles, as well as consensus-based decision-making processes to create the Quesada Gardens. The community-builders associated with the Quesada Gardens Initiative have been engaged in designing gardens, gathering spaces and public art in the neighborhood. In particular, Seth Wachtel, a professor at the University of San Francisco, and his students contributed to the design and building of the garden. They have attended community gatherings, recorded the consensus of the groups and created drawings. In the Quesada median strip there are variety of edible, ornamental and medicinal plants and flowers, such as collard, mustard and turnip greens, lettuce, cabbage, corn, peanuts, blue dahlia, lavender, aloe vera, sage, geraniums, calla lilies and cacti (Moody 2006). There are facilities like a composter on the strip, as well as a weekly volunteer program to support the urban agriculture. It is also a hub of a shared food program in the neighborhood, which was requested by Quesada residents. Food distribution is centered on families, churches and long-standing affinity group social networks (Betcher 2011).

Lessons Learned
Potential Benefits:

• Reduces health disparities by effectively encouraging better nutrition and physical activity.
• Prevents violence by strengthening social cohesion across demographic lines and by developing respect among diverse residents.
• Builds community by consistently involving new and long-term residents, and encouraging their reinvestment.
• Slows traffic through the lush mix of plants and trees planted in the median (QuesadaGardensblog).
• Reuses underutilized public land and demonstrates the potential for better utilizing other strips and small or irregular plots of land in the city.
• Beautifies an unsightly median, transforming it into an attractive edible landscape that is the pride and joy of residents. It stops littering and dumping when other strategies have failed.
• Improves the environment by reducing carbon emissions associated with transporting food. Visually, murals on adjoining walls not only celebrate the history of community garden, but provide the neighborhood with a unique sense of identity.
• Catalyzes other community garden projects throughout the neighborhood.

Potential Issues:

• Infrastructure: Some skill and expertise is needed to design and build the garden infrastructure.
• Funding: Grant-writing and fundraising skills are needed to support the project.
• Volunteer leadership: Strong project leadership is needed and volunteer burnout can create difficulties.
• Crime and loitering: The installation of fake cameras has discouraged loitering and crime in the Quesada Gardens (Quesada Gardens Initiative Board Meeting).