If you’re a city dweller, too often, your only source of fresh vegetables is a supermarket. Or, if you’re lucky, the occasional farmers market.
A plot of land to grow a garden is usually the exception with most urban apartments, condominiums and even some city houses.
In San Francisco, there’s a growing demand for community garden plots. In fact, there are more than 500 people on a waiting list for such a plot.
And that’s why folks here were happy to open a new one this week at the city’s famed Golden Gate Park. And we were happy to help.
The addition of the new Golden Gate CommUNITY Garden now gives the city three dozen such gardens – an indication that what’s known as the urban agriculture movement is alive and well in San Francisco.
Where does Levi Strauss & Co. come in?
As you know, we work to build sustainability into everything we do, and this also applies to our community involvement. In this particular project, a $20,000 gift funded permeable paving within the garden. That paving contributes to the environmentally friendly nature of the garden by allowing rainwater to flow through the earth and recharge the city’s groundwater.
Beyond that, our employees have donated hundreds of volunteer hours throughout San Francisco parks.
In addition to providing gardening space for San Francisco residents, the Golden Gate CommUNITY Garden will also be home to a native plant nursery, gardening beds, a greenhouse, tool lending library, education pavilion and demonstration garden.
Taking part in this week’s grand opening of the garden reminded me of the importance of nature to the urban landscape. It’s exciting to see the San Francisco Recreations and Parks Department investing in innovative and sustainable ways to benefit city and county residents.
I can’t wait to return to this new community garden to see how those residents are putting it to good use. Check out Rec & Parks’ great video below.
