Harvesting Community Involvement

If I am an expert at anything, I feel very confident in saying I know a lot about plants and gardening. Riverview Gardens in Appleton was built on the land of a private country club. They are a community organic farm and garden without physical boundaries. Their newest venture has been an enclosed hydroponic garden that was once the country club’s outdoor pool.
Riverview Gardens runs various job training programs in conjunction with the produce they create. They have a wonderful program for veterans.

Veterans and farming sound incompatible however there has been a growing movement combining the two into sustainable food, jobs, and community development. In fact, Dylan Ratigan, a former MSNBC host left television and began a partnership with former military guests from his show that had created a veteran resource hydroponic garden near Camp Pendleton San Diego, California.

Veterans have a sense of work ethic and service that other potential employees lack, so getting them involved in urban farming is a good fit. This kind of programming can also lend itself to other skills and disciplines, such as environmental psychology, landscape design, and architecture. In architecture and design, veterans can help create welcoming environments. They can use their previous experiences of being aware of their personal surroundings, hyper vigilance, and establishing safe perimeters to provide insight into creating safe, open, and inviting environments.

Riverview Gardens is a very wonderful resource agency in the community and the community benefits not only from their programming but also their healthy organic produce. They also recently procured a four story space in downtown Appleton which will help their job training programs out immensely. It could also serve as a better location for community awareness and outreach leading to their hidden away farm location near the Oneida Street bridge.