History
Forest Park Community Garden (FPCG) was started by two local gardeners, Jessica Rinks and Gina Thomas, in the summer of 2009. In its first year we built 15 raised beds, 12 of which were rented to residents in the community and 3 were planted and maintained by volunteers, the food grown there all donated to our local food pantry. We had no water that year so gardeners were only able to water their plants using what they could carry from home. In the second year we built 15 more beds and were lucky to have 10 rain barrels donated which were filled by the fire department each week. Having a solution for water helped us keep the plots rented but because the space was unsecure we experienced a fair amount of theft of vegetables that year. There was also no space to store tools which meant gardeners had to lug all their tools back and forth every trip. As an organization we explored options for improving security and providing storage but because our only revenue was the small plot rental fe