Jarvis Street Garden

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Sitka Planning Commission to discuss community gardens proposal at Wednesday meeting

The Sitka Planning Commission will hear testimony on a lease request to build two community gardens on city land during its meeting at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, July 19, at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

Transition Sitka and the Sitka Local Foods Network are jointly making the proposal, which would build Sitka’s first true community gardens since Blatchley Community Garden closed in 2016. The proposal will build two community gardens, one off Osprey Street behind the Vilandre Park ballfield next to Blatchley Middle School and a garden off the top of the Jarvis Street hill near where the new village of tiny homes for the homeless will be built.

“These gardens will fill a big food security need in our community, since we have a lot of people who live on boats or in apartments where they don’t have gardening space,” Sitka Local Foods Network board president Charles Bingham said. “When we worked on the Sitka Comprehensive Plan 2030, building new community gardens was listed as a major goal for the near future.”

There was a town hall on July 10 to discuss the proposal, which was moderated by the Sitka Planning and Community Development Department. KCAW did a morning interview before the town hall, and the Daily Sitka Sentinel wrote a story about the meeting (paywall).

For more information, go to https://transitionsitka.org/projects/sitka-food/sitka-community-gardens/ or call project coordinator Joel Hanson at 907-747-9834.

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Town hall meeting on July 10 will discuss new community garden proposal for Sitka

A town hall meeting to discuss Sitka community gardens will take place from 6-8 p.m. on Monday, July 10, at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

Nonprofits Sitka Local Foods Network and Transition Sitka are proposing to build two community gardens — on Jarvis Street and off Osprey Street.

The city’s Department of Planning and Community Development will moderate the discussion of the two proposals.

For more information, go to https://transitionsitka.org/projects/sitka-food/sitka-community-gardens/ or call Joel Hanson at 907-747-9834.

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Transition Sitka, Sitka Local Foods Network work to bring community gardens back to Sitka

In the spring of 2016, Sitka’s main community garden, Blatchley Community Garden was closed. Since then, Sitka hasn’t had a true community garden. But that soon might change.

Joel Hanson, who is part of the community sustainability group Transition Sitka and recently joined the board of the Sitka Local Foods Network, has been working on a proposal to create two community gardens. Both are about half an acre with 50 or more 10-foot-by-20-foot garden plots each, and located on city property. One is located off Osprey Street, next to the Vilandre baseball field next to Blatchley Middle School. The other is located near the top of Jarvis Street, near where the Sitka Homeless Coalition is building a new tiny house community for the unhoused.

More details, including maps, are included in the two linked handouts at the bottom of this story.

“Community gardens plant the seeds for a solution to community food security,” Hanson said. “They create a sense of place and cooperative engagement. They promote health, advance equity, encourage inclusion and foster resiliency. They are for people of all ages.”

“Rebuilding a community garden in Sitka has been a major need as far as food security in the years since Blatchley Community Garden was closed,” Sitka Local Foods Network president Charles Bingham said. “We have a lot of people in town who want to grow their own food, but they live in an apartment or on a boat and don’t have the space to garden. This gives them a place to grow their own produce. When Blatchley Community Garden was closed, all of the spaces were being used and there was a waiting list. This proposal fills that need and allows space for expansion.”

Over the past few months, Hanson has been meeting with city officials and committees/commissions, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, UAF Cooperative Extension Service, and other organizations to develop the proposal linked below. These community gardens still need approval before they can be developed. Once approved, we will need to raise money for supplies, recruit volunteers or hire workers to develop the land (which may involve cutting trees and leveling off soil), and more.

If you are interested in volunteering, helping raise money to build the gardens, having a plot in one of the gardens, or just staying in touch with what’s happening, please click this link and complete the short survey, https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SitkaGardens. For more details, contact Joel Hanson at 907-747-9834 or email captainjoel@alaskan.com.

• Sitka community gardens project prospectus (with maps of both locations)

• Two-page Q&A sheet with more information