Keeping Knoxville Beautiful

From the Keep Knoxville Beautiful blog:

Fueled by the passion of three AmeriCorps volunteers, the Knox County Community Action Committee and the City of Knoxville are bringing together a wide variety of community partners, including Keep Knoxville Beautiful to cultivate the Community Nourishment Garden at Tyson Park.

This exciting project encompasses their mission’s ideals of Community, Education, Productivity, Sustainability and Beauty by installing and maintaining a charitable garden of fruit trees, berries, and vegetables to directly benefit refugees at Bridge Refugee Settlement Services and community as a whole. The accessible location and undemanding design will be productive at different times of year and rely on volunteer commitment and sponsorship that they hope to gain from more areas of our community.

Some of the notable features of the design include:

Repurposed Building Materials: to build raised beds, a tool shed, and other needs as an example of raw resource reduction and material reuse
Water Catchment: to collect rainwater for responsible resource use in the garden
Productive and Edible Landscape Design: to provide food to the community and beneficiary throughout the growing season including pawpaw and apple trees, berries, hardy herbs and vegetables
Compost: to ensure that organic waste generated in the garden will be naturally recycled into compost and become a soil supplement for the garden
Rain Garden: to improve the water quality of Third Creek by filtering storm water as a model that community members can employ to lessen their household impact on our waterways.

To get involved with this landmark project, attend a public committee meeting or get in touch with the organizers listed below.

The first public committee meeting is being held tonight!
March 29th at 6:15pm
UT Conference Center Building
600 Henley St, Room 322
Parking available across the street, on the corner of Locust and Clinch (Free after 6 PM)
The directors of the project are very excited to meet with the community partners in one room and invite any interested citizen or new community group to join the conversation! They will be going over their plans and open to feedback, new ideas and opinions. If you can’t make it to the meeting, but you are interested in sponsorship or volunteer involvement, feel free to contact:

Liz Moniz: moniz.elizabeth@gmail.com :974-2049
Matt Butzlaff: mbutzlaff@cityofknoxville.org :755 3178