Week
2 Questions
Question 1: how would you deal with last minute opposition
You’ve done all of your advance work, put flyers up
in the neighbourhood, held 2 community meetings at your house,
got a tight group of 7 people all keen to create a community
garden, and everything is ready to go for the first work day
in the garden. The night before you get a call from your city
councillor who has gotten a call from an irate neighbour of the
site,who claims not to have heard anything about the project
until today. The person is convinced that “welfare bums,
homeless and worse” are going to invade the neighbourhood.
The councillor isn’t familiar with the particulars of your
project, though you did send him a flyer.
1: What will you do and what could you have done to
have avoided the problem in the first place?
Question 2: Too many people, too few plots...
2.Everyone is
excited about the new community garden--30 people have signed
up but you only have
25 plots. What will you do?
Question 3: too many weeds, too few gardeners...
3. The new community garden has gotten off to a roaring success.
Some of the gardeners are very experienced and some are first-timers.
The first timers are enthusiastic and are planting every square
inch of their plots. Many of them are in their plots every
evening after work during May and June, really getting into
gardening. Now it’s the end of July, hot and humid and
the first-timers aren’t spending every spare moment in
their plots anymore--in fact, 2 of the plots are getting quite
over grown, plants are going unharvested and the weeds are
starting to move out of the plots and into the paths. The other
gardeners are getting a bit perturbed about the weeds and want
you to do something about it.
QUESTION 3: What do you do?
Question 4: Groundrules: how do you ensure that all
understand them?
4. It was decided at one of the planning meetings to make the
garden strictly organic This was included into the garden’s
bylaws, which were handed out to everyone with their registration
form. Since everyone in the garden seems to speak passable English,
translations were not made. It’s the end of June and aphids
are invading the garden. One of the older gardeners, Mr. Nowicki,
sprays his tomatoes with a very un-organic chemical spray. He
decides to be neighbourly and also sprays his neighbours’ tomatoes
on each side of his plot. When some of the other gardeners see
him doing this, there’s an uproar. Mr. Nowicki, for whom
English is a second language and whose eyesight is poor, doesn’t
understand what the fuss is about. As far as he’s concerned
he has done his neighbours a favour.
QUESTION 4 :What will you do and how could you have avoided this
situation?
Question 5 : A sustainable start-up?
5. The mother of a friend
of your 9 year old daughter calls you with the idea of starting
a small garden at
your kids’ school.
You think it’s a fantastic idea and agree to help her
get it started. You volunteer to talk to the principal and
see if it’s feasible. The principal is cautiously enthusiastic
and suggests that you talk to the teachers at their monthly
staff meeting the following week. The other mother thinks that’s
a good idea but she can’t go to the meeting because she’s
too busy that day. You go anyway and the teachers seem to be
interested and think they might use a garden for science class
if lesson plans were available. The principal agrees to a small
test garden. When you tell the other mother she is very excited
and tells you that, although she can’t be there, she
can get her husband and her teenage son and lots of his friends
(who have a community service requirement ) to dig the garden
that weekend. The ball is really rolling now.
QUESTION 5: What's going on here, what do you think happens
next & why?
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