Planting Partners’ target audience includes residents from all Triangle complexes, including the disadvantaged, the young, the elderly, minorities, and people with disabilities. Planting Partners has involved over 75 residents to date in actively planting and developing the gardens, as well as participating in our respective education program. Moreover, Planting Partners expects to serve over 7,000 people as a meeting place and community garden that residents and visitors—including those who attend the annual Triangle Ethnic Fest —utilize on an ongoing basis.

In general, gardening and horticulture are activities that many middle- to high-income individuals and people without disabilities take for granted. Planting Partners provides the Triangle’s diverse residents with the supplies, space, education and solutions they need in order to garden and engage with nature. Based on several Triangle community meetings, the following target groups’ needs have been analyzed:

1. Disadvantaged: Because of interest, culture or therapy, gardening and horticulture are important aspects of many of our residents’ lives. Nevertheless, as the majority of the triangle residents are low-income and reside in large complexes, they are limited in terms of the space, tools and plants necessary to create and maintain their own organic gardens. Moreover, many residents rely on the local pantries and outside agency donations for food for their families. Planting Partners will address these needs by providing families with free organic produce on an individual basis and in large community dinners.

2. Youth: In today’s increasingly technological world, it is becoming difficult to interest youth in the environment and actively engage them in the outdoors. Additionally, our fast-paced world does not easily allow for proper nutrition or knowledge about good eating habits and related healthy lifestyle choices. Planting Partners is needed to educate our resident youth about the environment, nutrition, their bodies and their responsibilities to all of these aspects of gardening and horticulture.

3. Elderly: The American Heart Association names gardening as a moderate-intensity activity that, “when performed daily, can have long-term health benefits” for the elderly. Walking for pleasure has similar benefits, but the elderly population needs gardens and spaces on the Triangle that allow them to participate despite possible mobile difficulties, sensitivity to sun or other disabilities.

4. Minorities: Nearly 100 percent of Bayview’s population is minority; among the minority residents, farming, gardening and horticulture played [still play] important roles in their culture and native lands. For example, one Cambodian resident drives nearly an hour out of town weekly to work in his temple’s garden, producing food and income for his family; similarly, many of the Hmong families on site plant in the small, designated plots in front of their townhouses, practicing traditional farming methods and cultivating native plants. For these residents, Planting Partners would afford the opportunity to create large-scale, organic community gardens that would provide a sense of tradition and community, as well as food.

5. People with Disabilities: As many of the Triangle’s residents are individuals with disabilities, Planting Partners is necessary to provide both an activity and outdoor space sensitive to their wide range of capabilities. Currently, there are few similar opportunities or spaces that these residents may participate in or attend in the Madison area; additionally, most of the residents do not have access to appropriate, reliable and convenient modes of transportation to visit those few places that do exist. As Planting Partners will take place in the immediate community, residents with disabilities will be able to frequent the gardens when they are able.

Under the mandate of the Universal Design Process, we work cooperatively with residents and several UW-Madison landscape architects (drafting began March, 2005) to ensure that Planting Partners initially creates gardens accessible to people with a myriad of capabilities, saving money and time from having to rebuild and replant in the future. The program will feature unique organic gardens in order to encourage residents to get outside and interact with nature, accommodate the diverse makeup of the Triangle’s residents and to acknowledge the sensitive nature of the Triangle’s location on the isthmus. Throughout Planting Partners’ official (outdoor) duration from April 2005 through October 2005, it will seek to promote social inclusion, environmental awareness and healthy lifestyle choices.

The largest garden (minimum 8’x10’) is centrally located within the Triangle, and includes only vegetables [with some plants native to our residents’ lands]; this garden provides food for the residents to be used in several community dinners (dug early April, planted April through May). It will also include a living fence (pending funding), which will provide an area to plant berries and other fruits, as well as raised beds, low workstations and containers to minimize bending and stooping for individuals with limited mobility. Additionally, transportable containers will be easily relocated in the off-seasons, offering some residents the means for year-round, indoor gardening; they will also maximize space, as we will be able to create supplementary gardens on small balconies, patios and in the Karabis greenhouse. Wide paths with shade and seating will make certain that Triangle elderly residents and residents with disabilities will be able to garden or visit the gardens; we are fortunate to have some of this work already in place (additions will be made throughout the duration of the program as funding becomes available).

Other gardens will include flowering shrubs, plants, trees and herbs that will provide individuals with visual disabilities a variety of textures, scents and colors high in contrast. Furthermore, Bayview residents will be provided with sufficient space in front of each townhouse (#102) for their own, smaller gardens. Youth will not only be directly involved with the planting of these gardens, they will also assist some of our elderly residents with planting and the necessary upkeep as a service component of Planting Partners’ educational programming. Moreover, they will do worm farming, which will introduce them to the interrelationships of all animals, plants and people on a very basic level. To teach children about healthy lifestyle choices, nutrition and cooking classes will be another aspect of the education program.

We thank the following sponsors for their generosity and ongoing support:

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