The Pleasantville Community Garden

By Devin Juros and Dave Juros

The Facts

After researching, I came up with a long list of facts that fueled my determination to complete this
project and help the people who desperately need fresh and healthy food. These facts show that even
though we live in a fairly wealthy county, hunger is still around us and affects many in our communities.

Locally(Westchester County):

Westchester Food Bank estimates about 200,000 residents or 20% of people in Westchester are hungry or at risk
of hunger.
About 100,000 of those people receive food assistance regularly from hunger-relief programs and the other
100,000 people receive support occasionally.
Out of all of the people served by food pantries:

33% of those people are under 18 years old

8% are children for 0 to 5 years old

79% are food insecure

About 14,800 different people get emergency food assistance during any week

How Hunger is Growing:

In 1968 the unemployment rate in America was 4% of the population and the
number of Americans considered hungry was about 5% of the population
By 2012 the unemployment rate was up to 8% and the amount of people considered
food insecure in America was up to 16%
Today the issue is that even people holding full-time jobs arent always able to get the necessary food
they need to survive, so they look to food pantries for additional support
Sources: Feeding America report prepared for The Food Bank of Westchester (2010), The Food Bank of Westchester estimates, U.S. Department of Agriculture report
(2011), U.S. Census Bureau report (2011), UN FAO report State of Food Insecurity (2012), National Geographic Article(2014)

What We Wanted To Accomplish

We have 3 main goals we want to accomplish with the Pleasantville Community
Garden:
1.
2.

3.

We want food pantries to get much needed fresh food to give to people
who need support.
We want to create a common goal for the community to work towards to
connect people.
We want to make Pleasantville a greener place.

PCG Mission Statement:

To provide fresh, nutritious food to the hungry in Westchester County, by
growing and delivering healthy vegetables to local food pantries. The garden
will be built, maintained and operated by multi-generational local volunteer
groups and individuals working together to aid people in need. The garden will
be organic and adhere to reduce/reuse/recycle principles.

The Plan

There were many steps in the process towards building the garden and
we made sure to take them all in a careful and orderly manner

Monetary:

We held many events including multiple fundraising coffees where we would present to local community members
and pitch our cause, which resulted in donations and new helpful connections
We received a $5,200 grant from Episcopal charities
Received individual donations from friends, family and other interested people
In total we raised over $11,000 before the building of the garden
There were also multiple in-kind donations from community members - for our logo, tools, drawings of the garden and a
professional short video worth approximately $8000 in total

Support:

We signed up over 300 volunteers at various events like Pleasantville Day, the Pleasantville Farmers Market and from
our fundraising coffees
We met with local groups Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Rotary Club, Lutheran Church, and the Town of Pleasantville Board
of Trustees to raise awareness and gain support
We have over 120 followers Instagram and Facebook; started an Indeigogo campaign and also created a website

Experts:

We had several experts from the community help us during this project including: a construction manager, a grant
writer, a logo designer, a landscape architect and countless gardening specialists
These people helped us in areas we were not as familiar in and let the PCG flourish

Building the Garden

Building the garden was a community effort that spanned
two weekends and took over 100 dedicated volunteers

The garden was built over 2 weekends in May and June of 2014
We had over 100 volunteers come during this period to help put in the posts, level
the ground, build the beds, plant the seeds and countless other tasks
We had volunteers from the age of 4 to 92 come and help which achieved our goal
of making the garden a multigenerational community program
We planted flowers and also constructed a pergola to beautify the garden, so it fit
in with the neighborhood and made the neighbors happy
We had donations of tools, gloves and other materials to make the building
possible
Amazing compost was donated by Stone Barns so we started out with strong and
healthy soil
We installed a computer operated irrigation system that lets out a controlled
amount of water into the soil every day and avoids wasting water
The garden is 38x18 and is located on the grounds of St. Johns Episcopal Church
in Pleasantville, NY

Plants and Growing

We made sure to grow a few simple and easy to use crops for our
first year to make growing less complicated as we started out.

5 main crops were planted - tomatoes, green beans, peppers,

squash and cucumbers.
We used both seedlings and seeds were planted - to get
growing quickly and so there were waves of plants growing.
We have beds of flowers and herbs surrounding the garden
that can be picked by volunteers
Our zucchini and cucumbers contracted a powder-like mold
that had been circulating so we pulled them out and planted
new fall crops
For the fall, we added carrots, spinach and lettuce to our
garden which will grow into the late fall season
We grew over 170 pounds of tomatoes and over 120 pounds
of zucchini, our two biggest crops
We have currently donated over 850 pounds of fresh and
healthy vegetables to the Hillside Food Pantry
As of 10/20 we continue to harvest beans, tomatoes,
peppers, spinach and lettuce
The vegetables weve planted are easy to grow but also
easy to use to ensure Hillsides clients get nutrition

Volunteers
We could not have created the PCG without all of the amazing support
of our volunteers as they have helped us in every aspect so far.

Currently we have over 500 individuals on our list of supporters

We have multiple groups from the community including Girl Scouts, Boy
Scouts, Garden Club, Rotary Club, the PHS ISP Program and more
We implemented Open Garden Saturdays - every Saturday from
10:00am-noon. We spend time at the garden with volunteers to weed,
water and harvest and we also train next weeks volunteers, collect
vegetables dropped off from local supporters and give tours to people
who havent seen the garden yet
Our other method for maintaining the garden is by having volunteers
own a week which means for a week that volunteer will control every
aspect of the garden from watering to harvesting
Within 10 days of when we sent out our communication that explained
how people can adopt the garden, we had all 18 weeks of the growing
season booked
I have been able to get many of my friends from the middle school to
come and help as we have had over 40 different kid volunteers help
during this year
In addition we took 12 adult and kid volunteers to help us at St. Anns
Church in the Bronx as we weeded their overgrown beds to get them
back on their feet and donated food to their food pantry

Hillside Food Pantry

The intent of the garden is to donate 100% of the vegetables grown in the garden to area
food pantries. Early on in the process, we developed a relationship with Hillside Food
Outreach - an establishment in Pleasantville that delivers to Westchester residents.

Hillside serves 800 families/2400 individuals in Westchester and have been so successful that they've opened similar facilities in
Putnam County, NY and Fairfield County, CT.
They deliver their food to people unable to get to food pantries - either due to illness, age, or working parents who work
multiple jobs and cannot go to a pantry.
Hillside regularly purchases food, including fruits and vegetables from the local food bank. Unfortunately, the supplies of fresh
food are limited and quality is not great - as this produce has typically been sitting in a store and then transported to Hillside.
Because it sometimes has to wait up to a week to be given to the people, a lot of their produce they buy has to be thrown out
We have delivered over 850 pounds of fresh, healthy and organic vegetables to the Hillside Food Pantry as of October, 2014.

Our first delivery of produce from our garden to Hillside Food Outreach was made on July 6th, 2014 and we
delivered 27 lbs of squash, cucumbers and peppers. Soon after, Kathy Purdy, the Executive Director, emailed
us and that she had received an emergency call from Family Services in a nearby town, that a single mother
and her 6 kids had no food in the house and needed help and that many of our vegetables were going to her.

Results
Here are the results and yields from the PCGs first
year up and running.
As of October 2014 we have donated over 1000 pounds of fresh vegetables to the
Hillside Food Pantry
We have made our produce virtually 100% usable and have supplied Hillside with 2025% of their total produce needs
We used about $9,500 of our budget this year which leaves us about $1500 to use for
next year
Over 150 volunteers have been involved in some aspect of the Pleasantville Community
Garden- including watering, weeding, harvesting and delivering the produce
Over 40 kids have volunteered at the garden from ages 4-18 and have done a
tremendous job in supporting us. We held a thank you event on 10/19 for 27 of the
most active kids.
We were able to collect almost 50 pounds of fresh vegetables from acting as a drop-off
point for any community members with a garden that harvested an excess amount and
donated to us.

2015 Plans
We had an amazing amount of support from the community last
year as we built the Pleasantville Community Garden and now we
have plans to make it even better.

We have made agreements and plans with the High School and Middle School gardens to be able to utilize these
garden in the summer when they are not in use and plant our own crops

Expanding our promotion as a drop-off point for any home gardeners who have extra crops from a big harvest
and want to donate them to the food pantry

We would like to expand our new project of picking up leftover vegetables and fruits from the Farmers Market
vendors and donating them to Hillside Food Pantry along with our other produce

Increasing our pool of dedicated supporters and volunteers (both groups and individuals) who will aide us in the
maintaining of our garden, the school garden and also our Farmers Market project

We hope to more than double our amount of food donated this year setting our goal from 850 pounds to 2000
pounds of food donated in 2015 with the help of the added school gardens

We also want to get more students of all ages involved - from the elementary school to the high school as well
as Pleasantville Seniors - as we try to make this garden as multi-generational as possible

How You Can Help!

There are several ways that you can help us to achieve our goals with the Pleasantville
Community Garden:
1. Help us with Fundraising! We did an excelent job fundraising to build the garden but
now we need help raising money for the upkeep of and maintaining of the garden!
2. Help us run the garden! We will need lots of volunteers to help us plant, weed, harvest
and bring the food to the food pantries through the spring, summer and fall. All ages can
help!
3. Help us get the word out about the Pleasantville Community Garden! Please tell your
friends and family and groups you belong to about the garden and ask them to help us
also!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!