Jacob221
Registered: December 2014
City/Town/Province: Lenexa
Posts: 1
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I’ve always been an active member of my school and community, but just felt that it wasn’t enough to really help the environment, so I decided to do a project of my own, a project that I knew i could go back to years from now and still be able to see the impact it’s left, so I built a gourd trellis.
The area i did my project was in the urban area of Kansas city, near Troost Lake Park, where many families struggle to maintain a clean environment for their community. Working with a nonprofit group called Metropolitan Lutheran Ministries, i was able to build a gourd trellis in their upcoming community garden and orchard. To offset the crime and vandalism in the area, Metropolitan Lutheran Ministries created this garden to allow families and members in the neighborhood an opportunity to care for something and benefit the environment. One of the most important aspects of this garden is the gourd trellis.
This trellis will act as a hanging garden for gourds, and with these gourds, members of the community will be able to pick them, carve them and decorate them however they please, and transform them into natural birdhouses to draw in finches to the orchard. With these finches, they’ll be able to keep insects away from the orchard and vegetable gardens, allowing more organic foods to be grown for the community members. One of the best things about these birdhouses is that once they rot away over the summer, the community can just make a new one and use the old one as fertilizer for their orchard or gardens. It’s a structure that will last over the years and have never-ending benefits for the community.
The structure itself is an 8ft by 16ft hanging garden to keep the gourds off the ground, allowing them to grow bigger and from becoming muddy and moist. Cattle paneling is used to hold the gourds up, along with screws, industrial zip-ties, and washers to keep the cattle panels in place and help prevent the metal from being stolen. They’re buried one foot into the ground, and to prevent the irrigation pipes for the orchard from being damaged by the posts, the posts have been surrounded by rocks.
This project has led me to working on other projects to conserve the environment and a future geared towards keeping the natural world safe and healthy. I’ve decided to major in park management and conservation to further pursue my love for the environment and sharing it with others, Working on this project with my volunteers has really led to a better understanding of leading and managing a group towards a goal as well. This project has done nothing but benefit me, the community it has helped, and hopefully future concepts for community gardens.
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