Everyone remembers the scene from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, when young Charlie Bucket first walks into the room where everything is edible from the grass, to the trees, and even the giant chocolate river flowing through it. The Edible Forest & Community Garden at Sawyer-Ludwig Park is much the same way, though with fewer cavities and much higher nutritional value..
The Forest was developed to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to local residents, as the west side is considered a food desert (lower-income area with limited access to healthy fresh food) by the USDA. Currently, neighborhood residents are helping themselves to vegetables from the community garden boxes, while the fruit trees will mature in approximately three years.
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The project, reinvigorated as a class project of the 2018-19 Leadership Marion class, has been dedicated to the late Dan Stewart, former board chairman of Marion Community Food Development. “The development of the edible forest was truly a community wide collaborative effort. Marion City, local businesses, institutions, non-profits, and local government departments all understood the vision and partnered on the project,” Stewart said, when the project began in 2017. Development partners included: Nucor Steel, Park Enterprise, Phoenix Services, Fisher Excavating, J & S Poly Farms, Ohio State University at Marion, Creating Healthy Communities, Marion Public Health, Marion Community Food Development, and the Marion Community Foundation.
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In 2017, state officials visited the Food Forest site to review how the city had spent Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money on the project and were reportedly impressed by the project–so much so that they submitted the project to the federal government for the Presidential Innovation Award, which recognizes outstanding CDBG projects that think outside of the box in addressing local community issues. The Edible Forest was the only project the state selected to submit for this award that year. The Edible Forest project did not win the award, but it put Marion on the map with state officials.
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The 2018-19 Leadership Marion class took on the Edible Forest & Community Garden as their class project. They formed the “Dirty Hands Committee” to clean the existing raised beds, add additional fruit and nut bearing trees, plant new crops, trees and shrubs, install benches, and improve signage and awareness. The Leadership Marion projects, the Edible Forest project is not a once-and-done effort. The class formed a 501(c)(3) non-profit to support and sustain the program, including an active board. Officers include Sherod McGuire, Stacy Webb, and Kelly Makowski. The group schedules two clean-up days each May and offers programs at other times of the year.
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Community-wide support makes this and other Leadership Marion projects viable. Contributions to the Edible Forest project included benches made at Marion Correctional Institution, donations of soil and mulch from Park Enterprises and ProScape, and volunteers from groups such as Girls Scouts, Marion Harding High School, and POET Biorefining, and signange created by Lobo Awards & Graphix. Partners for the project were the Marion Parks Department and Marion Regional Planning.
#WeAreFood #WeAreCommunity
