Many Hands Make Light Work
Collaborators Come Together to Revive Willits’ Harrah Senior Center Garden
by Shannon Furr
The gates were locked, and a once bountiful garden was now buried in four feet of weeds. The Harrah Senior Center Garden in Willits was closed until further notice. The torch had been passed by the folks that ran the garden previously, but there was no one to take on the garden management. After the pandemic hit, a few of the members of the Willits Garden Club decided to give it a try. With the help of the Gardens Project of North Coast Opportunities (NCO), 100 Women Strong, and the Commonwealth Garden, a delightful collaboration came together. Significant donations by Dripworks, Cold Creek Compost, Sparetime Supply, and Family Tree Service provided needed support materials.
The Harrah Senior Center Community Garden became the newest of the 56 gardens supported by the NCO Gardens Project, which empowers community, one garden at a time, in creating shared spaces for cultivation and supporting local gardeners to become leaders and decision makers. Lucy Kramer, Gardens Project Coordinator, met with the Harrah Senior Center Board to organize systems for the garden to meet the requirements for designation as a community garden.
“Partnering with The Harrah Senior Center and The Willits Garden Club on this project has been a wonderful experience. The work by The Willits Garden Club with Shannon Furr has created a strong foundation for a very successful garden of great benefit to the larger community,” says Lucy. With the help of Cody Bartholomew, the President of The Golden Rule Church Association and a contractor for Ridgewood Community Builders, the project participants constructed six raised beds, designed to be wheelchair accessible. Cody is passionate about supporting independence for seniors, and he was pleased to support The Harrah Community Garden project.
All of this garden organizing took significant effort as well as fundraising. The NCO Gardens Project had been a recent recipient of an ingenious collective called 100 Women Strong. “The mission and purpose of this group [100 Women Strong] is to promote our local non-profits by sharing real stories with the public about what they do and how they impact people’s lives,” says Katie Fairbairn, founder. “I had attended a 100 Women Strong event in Lake County and was so inspired by what they were accomplishing on behalf of their community, and the sheer support and love shown to their non-profit organizations, I just had to do it in Mendocino County. I really wanted to do something that would make a difference and impact our community. I reached out to six amazing women who, after listening to my spiel, immediately said yes to creating a group here. It was meant to be, because everything just came together so naturally and easily.”
100 Women Strong Inland Mendocino just finished their inaugural year. The premise is this: Anyone who is interested commits to donating a hundred dollars to the winning nonprofit at each of the quarterly gatherings. At the event, members are given a ballot. Representatives from three non-profits make a pitch for the attendees’ votes. Ballots are counted, a winner announced, and checks are written directly to the non-profit. There is no overhead or fee, so the nonprofit receives the total donated by those present. Many members are so moved by the presentations that they write checks to each of the organizations represented.
“Last year, we raised over $92,000 in four gatherings. We averaged $23,000 per meeting, with on average $21,000 going to the winning non-profit and the other $2,000 going to the other two non-profits,” explains Katie. “Due to COVID-19, our first gathering in 2020 was postponed. We held a virtual event on June 11. We didn’t expect a good turnout and were hoping to maybe raise $10,000. Well, once again, this community came through with flying colors. At one point we had over 90 people on the zoom call, and we raised over $22,000!” The five winners of funding to date include: National Alliance on Mental Illness, Cancer Resource Center of Mendocino County, Walk Bike Mendocino, NCO Gardens Project, and the most recent winner, Project Sanctuary.
Last November, the Gardens Project was the winner of that evening’s award. Sarah Marshall, Gardens Project Manager, spoke passionately about the impacts of food insecurity, especially in the elderly of Mendocino County. She affirmed that community gardens not only relieve a nutritional burden, but also foster community connections, diminish loneliness, and contribute to personal empowerment. The attending members of 100 Women Strong agreed and awarded the group more than $10,000 in donations. The NCO Gardens Project, in turn, invested in the Harrah Senior Center Garden with some of those funds. They partnered with the Willits Garden Club, providing financial support and training on operating a community garden.
The community collaboration continued with the nearby Commonwealth Garden, a project of the Howard Hospital Foundation, providing plant starts. “We are blessed to be able to provide locally grown produce to patients, staff, and visitors at the Adventist Health Howard Memorial Hospital, the Willits Food Bank, Daily Bread, and the Caring Kitchen. And this year, Commonwealth was able to provide plant starts to over 160 families as well as the Harrah Senior Center Garden,” enthuses Ananda Johnson, garden manager.
It’s such a blessing to grow something from a seed and watch it come to fruition. It’s even more satisfying to the soul to give back to the seniors and the homeless with all that this community garden now produces. There is disabled access to personal half wine barrels instead of a daunting row for those that are unable to reach down. Those custom-built planter boxes from Cody hold every kind of vegetable and herb one could ever want, including five different varieties of squash, eggplant, four varieties of lettuce, watermelon, cantaloupe, cauliflower, beets, turnips, artichoke, sweet peas, pole beans, three varieties of cucumber, carrots, six varieties of tomatoes, peppers, brussels sprouts, flowers, and fruit trees. It’s been a healing sanctuary for all involved, and it makes us all feel we are truly part of a community effort.
It was extensive community cooperation that brought the Harrah Senior Center Garden back to thriving vitality. Now, despite the challenges of the pandemic, community members of all ages and abilities can dig in the soil, share a laugh with fellow gardeners, clear their minds by weeding the beds, and fill their bellies with the homegrown harvest.
To learn more, visit gardensproject.org and willitsseniorcenter.com.
Shannon Furr is a member of the Willits Garden Club and creator of Odin’s Organic Dog Treats. When not gardening, you can find her carousing with her furry family, Odin and Ragnar the Bernese Mountain Dogs.
