Forest Street Community Garden

The Chippewa Valley’s growing community garden movement will take root in another location next spring. The Eau Claire City Council recently unanimously approved an effort to create a Southside Community Garden in Fairfax Park. Eau Claire is already home to four community gardens – Forest Street, Jeffers Road, Lakeshore, and Demmler – all pieces of public land where people who don’t otherwise have access to garden space can rent plots to grow their own goodies.

The effort to plant a garden on Eau Claire’s south side grew out of a desire to give neighborhood residents a chance to dig in the dirt close to home. “There are quite a few people from this side of town who garden at the Forest Street garden,” explained Rachel Hart-Brinson, outreach coordinator for the project.

Originally, advocates wanted to create the garden on the south side of the Fairfax Park, near Golf Road. However, city parks officials identified that area as the future site of a four-season shelter and an ice rink and said they instead supported creating the garden on the park’s north end, just west of a trio of ball diamonds and south of South Middle School. But soil tests showed that while the soil in the southern end of the park is ideal for gardening, the dirt on the north side is too sandy and would need to be supplemented before it could be successfully used for gardening. As a compromise, the City Council voted Oct. 28 to approve the garden on the park’s north end but instructed the parks department to bring in good topsoil to the area.

Hart-Brinson says the group hopes to lease out about 20 plots next year, which would be either 10-by-20 or 20-by-20 feet. If the project flourishes, organizers hope to eventually add a greenhouse (where gardeners can start their own plants) and a tool shed – although such additions will depend on fundraising and grant-writing, Hart-Brinson said. To learn more about the project or to find out how to reserve a plot, email southsidegardenec@gmail.com.