At Baker-Ripley Neighborhood Center in Gulfton, children, teenagers and adults have worked together to create a community garden. Community garden projects are a great way to bring neighbors together no matter the age or skill level.

Recently the garden sprang to life when Baker-Ripley members and youth spent two days with volunteers from Home Depot and Urban Harvest tilling the ground and prepping the beds.

 

What is great about a community garden is that it doesn’t matter how large or small an undeveloped plot of land is – you just need neighbors. Want to lead the way in creating one in your neighborhood? A great place to start is with HTown Bingo, which helps you identify problems, offer solutions and improve your community in a fun way.

 

With Htown Bingo you are able to report potholes, graffiti, that creepy dilapidated house on the corner and other neighborhood problems to SeeClickFix.com (a nationwide, non-emergency reporting system), then tweet a picture of the issue with the tag #htownbingo. If you don’t use Twitter, don’t worry, you can also play using Facebook. To download the bingo board and learn the rules, click here.

 

Not just for reporting problems, HTown Bingo also gives you the opportunity to better your community. If you find a great space that looks like a garden just waiting to come alive, reporting it is just the first step. There are plenty of resources in Houston that can provide help to cultivate your green thumb. Urban Harvest and The Last Organic Outpost are just two of many community resources there for you.

 

And of course, be sure to stop by Baker-Ripley Neighborhood Center or Harbach-Ripley Neighborhood Center to see how their gardens grow. 

 

The community gardens also serve to complement programming at our centers. Produce will be used for free cooking demonstrations at our Health Fair in August and also as a part of the lesson plans and skills section in our Promise Community School and Adult Education programs.

 

The best part is that a garden can bear other kinds of fruit. The Baker-Ripley garden received an artistic touch in April when Sacha Lazarre, Neighborhood Centers’ staffer and artist in residence, led 16 YES Prep students in the creation of an Earth Day mural on the fence behind the garden.

 

The community garden is just one way that you can use this great resource. To learn more about HTown Bingo and SeeClickFix, head over to: www.htownbingo.com.