Charlie Bevilacqua, board member of Loving Garland Green, stands in front of a pile of mulch delivered to the Garland Community Garden yesterday.
Doug Athas, as mayor of Garland, and leading official and representative for our city, has been highly supportive of our efforts at Loving Garland Green to establish a Garland Community Garden from day one. In fact, I can say for certain: Without the mayor's encouraging input and support over the past six months in the process of obtaining permission to establish this garden, I would have thrown in the towel a couple of months ago.
I have just recently learned that Mayor Athas is not the only top official in our city who cares about our garden. We can add Mr. Bill Dollar, our City Manager, to the list of our city's top leaders who support urban agriculture in our community as well.
Yesterday, before delivering the License Agreement with my notarized signature, to Felisa Conner of the Neighborhood Vitality Program (another strong advocate for the garden), I stopped by the Mayor's office to let him know that I had signed the agreement. He took me over to Bill Dollar's office and introduced me. Bill promised the city would deliver several cubic yards of mulch to the garden. To tell the truth, I thought "Yeah, when? At Christmas?"
Well that was about 1:30 in the afternoon. At about five PM when I drove by the site (4022 Naaman School Road) there was the huge pile of mulch--just as Bill had promised. Not only was I extremely grateful, I was totally amazed. The sight would have knocked my socks off had I been wearing a pair.
Our city of Garland has great leadership who care not just about Loving Garland Green the organization but who care as much as we do about loving Garlnd green.
THANK YOU BILL AND MAYOR ATHAS!
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For those who are interested in learning more about our plans for the Garland Community Garden, "Exhibit C" created as an attachment for our License Agreement, describes what we want to do with the licensed space. Of course, we can expect this information to evolve as time moves forward.
GARLAND COMMUNITY GARDEN DESCRIPTION