Congratulations to all our volunteers for your part in making the Throop Learning Garden a Green City honoree by the City of Pasadena!

Hard to top that, but the festivities continued the evening of the 21st and all day on Sunday the 22nd.

Saturday night, Throop Church screened  “A Place at the Table”, followed by a discussion led by Dr. Eric Walsh, director of the Pasadena Department of Public Health. The documentary deals with hunger and its many faces across the US.  The discussion centered around how we can end hunger in our community. This seemed like a continuation of the “Next Course” event organized by Mark Rice that took place earlier that day. Many ideas were expressed with the central question being, how do we connect the dots with habitat, food, and water conservation? We seem to be reaching critical mass with so many people addressing pieces of the issue of food security. The major gist is to encourage local gardens and expand education.

Sunday, Laura Henne offered an in depth Worm Composting Workshop.  She presented two examples of working worm bins and led a lively discussion of the pitfalls of worm composting and how to avoid them. She spoke in depth about worms’ habitat, their lifecycles, and how best to manage them. Laura then offered the opportunity to build a worm bin, while having the rest of us harvest castings. The combination of discussion and hands-on brought a deeper understanding of the process for all who participated. Several folks went home with bins, or worms, and many shared in the harvested worm castings. Thanks, Laura, for such an enjoyable, informative workshop!

At the Pasadena Earth and Arts Festival, Mark Rice of Pasadena Learning Gardens hosted the first of four meetings, entitled “The Next Course”. There were about forty people present, with representatives from a variety of organizations, including the county’s Master Preserver program, the Pasadena Public Health Department, the Pasadena Community Garden, NELA Transition, Flintridge Center, Sustainable World, 7th Principle, Throop U.U. Church, and likely others I didn’t recognize. Rather than being an educational course, this event is really meant to be a gathering of activists around urban food issues.

The concept is here we all are in Pasadena and Altadena, we have a large array of natural and human resources, and a wealth of community activism. What can we do to impact the impact the issues of food justice, food deserts, and the sustainability of the overall food distribution system? Is there a consensus we can come to around these issues?

I like to wrap all of this with the term “urban agriculture”. LA County has a rich history of urban agriculture that goes back over a hundred years. When the LA basin started to expand rapidly in the early twentieth century, the promise of large enough lots, where a homeowner could do some farming close enough to the city to get to work each day, drew many to Southern California.

NELA Transition [now Transition Pasadena] is thrilled to announce that the City of Pasadena recently awarded two of our sustainability projects with 2013 Green City Awards! The annual awards ceremony took place on April 20th as part of the Pasadena Earth & Arts Festival.

Repair Café Pasadena, a collaboration of NELA Transition and the Arroyo S.E.C.O. Network of Time Banks, received an award for Waste Reduction, “for advancing the transition from a consuming to a conserving society by hosting eight community events resulting in the repair of 240 items.” And Throop U.U. Church and NELA Transition received an award in the Urban Nature category, “for working collaboratively with the community to transform 8,000 square feet of water loving Bermuda grass into the Throop Learning Garden.”

We wish to thank everyone who has come out to participate in our events and projects, and also to everyone who has been working to make our community a more sustainable one!

— Qrys Cunningham

Photo: Reverend Tera Little of Throop Unitarian Universalist Church and January Nordman of NELA Transition receive a Green City Award from Vice Mayor Margaret McAustin, with Gabriel Silva of Pasadena Public Works and several Throop Learning Garden volunteers in attendance.