If you live in the Minneapolis area, you may have noticed Common Roots Café is starting a garden behind (and around) two houses just behind the café. Much work has already been done: the two homes are undergoing major renovations, plenty of asphalt and contaminated soil were removed, and new topsoil and compost were brought in. A pile of wood chips meant for pathways awaits. But how to get it all in place?

Volunteers! The first volunteer day was this Tuesday. We enjoyed great weather for hoeing, raking, and shoveling: cloudy, grey, and cool. Even though it wasn’t an official volunteer day, I was back on Wednesday, this time in bright sun, to help some more. The forecast for Saturday morning looks promising; planting time is from 9 am–2 pm and a late-afternoon rain is predicted. Since our friend Peter is coming to town, we’ll be heading first thing to the Midtown Farmers’ Market and then back home with plenty of time to do some gardening. The plans for the garden, masterminded by Cathy (from Nature’s Nest Farm), include fruit trees, vegetables, herbs, and flowering plants—all to be used in the café.

I feel very lucky to have had a little part in this and hope to be able to continue to help as the garden progresses. If you’d like to keep in the loop on how you can help, try Common Roots’ events page, their facebook page (with photo gallery), or following them on Twitter @commonroots. 

Tags: Common Roots, Compost, Garden, Green, Minneapolis, Outdoors

This entry was posted by Martha on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Minneapolis, Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.