27 May
Defiant Gardens: Connecting Families and Communities

Posted by Kenneth Helphand in the Iraq archive


Defiant Gardens: Connecting Families and Communities
The deployment of soldiers overseas places stress on children, spouses and the community at large.  But there are some promising approaches to fostering resilience among military families and communities, including nature-based activities and Civic Ecology Education, where youth and adults partner to enhance the local environment, form long-term relationships, learn about natural science and get exercise.
Defiant Gardens is a program of the Military Families Project, a partnership between Cornell Cooperative Extension Association of Jefferson County, Cornell University Department of Natural Resources and The Growing Connection (TGC), a grassroots project developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (http://www.thegrowingconnection.org). The Military Families Project will investigate the ability of a multi-generational Civic Ecology Education program to help communities deal with the stress of the military deployment cycle. The Military Families Project is funded by monies from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Hatch Act. Implementation of the Defiant Gardens program was made possible by a grant from the Jefferson County Department of Social Services.
Robert Patterson, Senior Liaison Officer, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, will be presenting Fort Drum’s Hearts Apart Community and Container Gardening Club with 12 EarthBox container garden kits for use in the Defiant Gardens program, purchased by Cornell University’s Initiative for Civic Ecology. Patterson will be teaching Hearts Apart members about the EarthBox system at 12:00 p.m. Thursday, May 14, 2009 at Army Community Service (ACS), P-4330 Conway Road. Members of Hearts Apart will then plant vegetables in the containers the group will tend throughout the summer. The planting is expected to end by 2:00 p.m.
Joining Patterson will be Keith G. Tidball, Associate Director of Cornell University’s Initiative for Civic Ecology (http://krasny.dnr.cornell.edu/pages/ce.php) and Stephanie Graf, Youth and Family Development Program Leader, Cornell Cooperative Extension Association of Jefferson County.
The ACS container garden is one of eight Defiant Gardens the Military Families Project will plant in Jefferson County. These gardens are sites where children and families, both military and civilian, can share their experiences and bond as community members during the school year and throughout the summer. Four additional gardens will be planted in deployment-affected communities across New York State such as Buffalo and Utica.
Kenneth Helphand, author of the book Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime, defines defiant gardens as “gardens created in extreme or difficult environmental, social, political, economic, or cultural conditions. These gardens represent adaptation to challenging circumstances, but they can also be viewed . . . as sites of assertion and affirmation.”
Youth from military families and their parents, retired soldiers, neighbors, and friends will plant Defiant Gardens at sites donated by American Legions, VFW Posts, schools, and other civic organizations. The partnerships formed by children, veterans, and other community members will assist families in navigating the deployment cycle.  These children will also connect with their parents overseas by sharing their gardening successes through regular emails, weekly phone calls, social networking websites such as Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) and MySpace (http://www.myspace.com), and our Defiant Gardens blog (http://defiantgardens.blogspot.com -or- http://defiantgardens-jefferson.blogspot.com/ ).
Ideal participants in the program will be military families with middle-school aged students with one or more parent in the deployment cycle (deploying, deployed, or recently returned from deployment), spouses of soldiers in the cycle, veterans, community members and non-military families, civic leaders, teachers, and members of school administrations. Participants will benefit from the project by creating community support networks for military families, allowing military families to educate the community on deployment issues, creating a communication connection between the children and their deployed soldier, increasing military families’ resiliency as they navigate the deployment cycle, and assisting the families with the reunion and reintegration process.
For more information regarding the Defiant Gardens program, please call Keith G. Tidball at Cornell University at 607-254-5479, or 315/788.8450 and speak with Jeremiah Maxon at x 260 or Holly Sakowich at x 229 of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County.

Posted in Iraq |

52 Responses to “Defiant Gardens: Connecting Families and Communities”

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    July 11th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

    Thought you might be interested in a post about the gardens of Alcatraz restoration project being undertaken by the Garden Conservancy -
    http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=6446

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