Neighbors growing together

The best way to get a neighborhood to grow together, might be for them to grow things together.

A project that attempts to help a central Appleton neighborhood work toward a better quality of life – from the dirt up – geared up this week with volunteers from the Fox Cities Kiwanis Club delivering wooden garden boxes and buckets of compost to residents of the neighborhood around Columbus Elementary School and Arbutus Park.

Many of the 20 neighbors receiving the gardens will plant their crops in their front yards, to make better use of space now in lawn and to make their efforts more visible to their neighbors.

Can a few tomato plants popped into a wooden frame revitalize a neighborhood? To say yes would be the stuff compost is made of. At least if that were all the Neighborhood Partners project did. But it isn’t.

On the docket for this ambitious project involving more than 15 nonprofit and business partners and supported by a $50,000 Environmental Sustainability Partnership Grant and other funders are also:

• Household energy efficiency improvements
• A community garden at St. Therese Catholic Parish
• Arbutus Kids Club activities
• Organic lawn care and business training for Junior Landscapers
• Improvements to the playground at Columbus School
• Native wildflower plantings
• A new Habitat for Humanity home
• Drainage improvements at Arbutus Park
• And more projects selected by the neighbors.

Learn more or ask how you can help nurture the partnership growing in this neighborhood at sustainfv.org/projects/neighborhood-partners/ or by contacting project manager Julie Filapek at julief@sustainfv.org.

Read a recent news release