Weedy backyard, lawn that’s draining you with water bills, the few acres out back that you don’t know what to do with– I’d like to introduce you to my friend–apartment windowsill herb garden, patio overcrowded with container plants threatening to jump out of their pots if you don’t plant them. It’s weed-patch meet pumpkin-patch, its grass meet chard.

Garden matchmaking is not a grassroots movement. Garden matchmaking is a mycelium, roots, tuber and shoots movement for lonely lawns to meet just the right garden.

How garden matchmaking works:

If you have underutilized land (an empty planter, a disused yard, an empty lot) in San Luis Obispo or surrounding cities, or are a gardener in need of extra growing space–fill out our questionnaire.  Our nonprofit facilitates yard sharing between gardeners and landowners providing: letters of understanding, liability insurance, startup help, and connections to information and resources.  The best part is—it’s free!

In addition to tending a database, OneCoolEarth will hold focus potlucks in neighborhoods around San Luis Obispo to bring the local-est of the local in on the movement, advertising the event door to door before hand. If you would like to volunteer to help, conact us.

Garden matchmaking has been tried before here, here, and here. It works!

The goals of garden matchmaking are:

To create a sustainable, community based food system

To alleviate the shortage of community garden spaces

To fully enjoy San Luis Obispo’s blessed growing climate

To unite communities

While there are many commendable and soon to be realized efforts to meet the demand for community garden spaces in San Luis Obispo and neighboring cities, including the Meadow Park Community Gardens, the Calle Joaquin City Farm, and the Paso Robles demonstration garden, garden matchmaking offers an immediate solution to the shortage. It does not attempt to undercut or bypass these efforts, but to complement them, working towards their selfsame goals.

Economic instability, climate change, and peak oil are major challenges that we have to face simultaneously and holistically. Victory gardens helped the US meet similar challenges during WWII, and they can help today, too, cutting food miles, reducing carbon emissions, lowering food costs, and liberating our daily needs from the vagaries of an overly complicated, transportation and processing-dependent, just-in-time food system.

We can eat fresh year round! And growing food grows self grows community.

For more information about garden matchmaking or to get involved in the program, contact us.

– Greg