Volunteering: 2022 In Review

2022 was a transformative year for the Volunteer Program here at the Civic Garden Center (CGC). The CGC is limited by a small staff who cannot manage each project we’re involved in, and so as the scale of projects continues to grow, we’ve been shifting to work smarter, not harder.

To do that, we’ve begun investing more time and effort in the training and education of specific volunteer groups and individuals as well as empowering volunteer group leaders who can operate independently within a space or lead their own groups of volunteers. This model, which already exists in our community garden network, is now being applied successfully to our forest restoration and pollinator garden efforts.

Treeforestation

Our Treeforestation program continues to be one of our largest volunteer efforts. In 2022, we took on a third site, Withrow High School, while continuing to provide regular support in the form of monthly workdays to our existing sites at Walnut Woods of Evanston and St. Xavier High School. In total, we worked with more than 400 unique individuals and planted roughly 600 native trees this season across the three sites.

Our newest site, Withrow High School, is a new type of project for us. Instead of a forest, Withrow has large expanses of grass dotted with individual trees and pockets of shrubs that are being overtaken by invasive species. Our goal here is not to restore a forest, but to establish outdoor educational spaces—including pollinator and woodland gardens—within the existing school landscape that allow teachers to educate students about the flora and fauna native to Southwest Ohio while improving the aesthetic beauty of the campus. In the past year, volunteers and teachers have installed over 100 native plants and trees, removed large amounts of honeysuckle and build a mulched trail system that allows students to interact with and learn from the newly added native plants. The goal here is to create a handful of pollinator gardens and woodland gardens

The biggest accomplishment in our Treeforestation program in 2022 was the grand opening of our Walnut Woods of Evanston project. It took four years and more than 6,000 volunteer hours to turn this blighted space into a functional park, but in 2022 the space was officially recognized as a formal Cincinnati Park—complete with signage, trail markers and a trail map of the site! This space is open to the public and is regularly utilized by Walnut Hills High School teachers and staff throughout the school day.

Treeforestation is now at a transitional point as we take on more restoration sites and execute more specialized tasks at each site. At our Walnut Woods site, for instance, restoration efforts have moved beyond the low-hanging fruit of honeysuckle removal to focus on removing species that are more difficult to deal with, such as Porcelain berry. To accomplish this, we have trained volunteers on plant identification, removal techniques and herbicide application.

Community Gardens

In 2022, the CGC continued to support community gardens in our network with volunteer groups to help clean up, maintain and complete construction projects.

Our largest volunteer effort this year was the restoration of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Garden located in Avondale. The garden had lost many of its gardeners during the pandemic and, as a result, garden maintenance had fallen by the wayside. We worked with the Community Garden Coordinators and volunteers to remove aggressive weeds and invasive vines that had overtaken many parts of the garden. Volunteers also planted beds with late-season vegetables, increasing the garden’s yields. We will continue to support the MLK Garden in 2023 as we work with community members to identify the next generation of gardeners who will call the space home.

Hauck Botanic Garden

2022 marked the third year of our restoration efforts here at our Hauck Botanic Garden home. We doubled the size of our onsite vegetable garden, allowing us to produce nearly 800 pounds of food! In partnership with GE, we were able to add more production beds to the existing garden space and install two new pollinator gardens.

Increasing the size and scale of our onsite native plant gardens was another major focus in 2022. CGC volunteers installed more than 1,000 pollinator plants, drastically increasing the diversity of native pollinator gardens within Hauck Botanic Garden.

In addition to our work on the grounds, we’ve begun using our space to grow more native plants and vegetable starts. CGC staff and volunteers grew more than 3,500 native plants and roughly 4,000 veggie starts this season. The former were sold to homeowners during our Fall Plant Sale as well as donated to our community and school garden partners to develop habitat and outdoor classrooms. Many of the latter went to our community gardeners through seasonal giveaway events.

Looking Ahead

In 2023, our Volunteer Program will only continue to grow! We’ll be moving forward with a teams-based approach, allowing individual volunteers to find opportunities in the areas that most appeal to them: horticulture, conservation, urban agriculture, education, and events and outreach. Learn more about our new approach and sign up for your team(s) here!