Council Approves New Community Garden Plots

Burnsville gardeners will have access to almost 50 new garden plots this spring after the City Council approved a plan for new community gardens on the city’s east side.

Plans for the new community gardens, to be located in Wolk Park, were unanimously approved Tuesday by the council.

“This is a strategy to have a healthier city,” Mayor Elizabeth Kautz said. “The community garden plots we already have have been wait-listed for a long time. I know there will be a wait list for this one too.”

The new gardens, which will be three circular spaces laid out in a circular design called a Mandala pattern, will add 48 garden plots for the use of city residents. The city’s IOC community garden, located adjacent to the International Outreach Center (IOC) on the west side of Burnsville, has 56 plots.

The new project was spearheaded by Tom and Elizabeth Kackman, who were also responsible for overseeing planning and construction of the IOC garden in 2008.

 “The concept for these [new] gardens is that you’ll actually interact more with the people around you,” Kackman told the council. “You’re walking by several other plots because of a pathway through the middle and a pathway around it.

“The second advantage is that you’ll farm or garden more intensively. This design maximizes the space and uses the soil and the amount of land more efficiently.”

Council member Dan Kealey praised the design. “This is a great-looking garden,” he said. “It’s not your standard square rows.”

Each gardener who reserves a plot in the new space will actually get two spaces, one on the outside of the circle and one on the inside.

“With a garden this size, you can feed a family of four for a year if you farm it intensively and correctly,” Kackman said. “The concept that you need a lot of land to grow vegetables – you really don’t. You just need a lot of training.”

Kackman heads up a new nonprofit organization, Woodhill Urban Agriculture Education Center, which raised $7,000 for the project. In addition, Valley Natural Foods donated $5,000, which will pay for installation of a water line to the garden area, and the Dakota County State Health Improvement Program (SHIP) made a grant of $2,000.

Events are being organized by the center to educate residents on how a Mandala garden works and how to plant, maintain, harvest and store food.

“I believe there will be such a demand that spaces will fill up very quickly,” Kackman said.

She said the Minnesota Valley YMCA, which works with 150 children during its summer program, plans to reserve four of the plots for those children and will bring 40 of them to the garden at a time during the summer.

A handful of the other plots will be allocated to the Garage and Valley Natural Foods, Kackman said.

Construction of the new gardens is expected to begin later this month, with a projected opening date in early May. The area will be prepared by city park maintenance staff, but ongoing maintenance will be the responsibility of the Woodhill Urban Agriculture Education Center.

Registration for the new garden plots will be handled by the Burnsville Recreation Department, and information will be available beginning April 18. There will be no online registration; residents who are interested in a plot can call (952) 895-4510 and leave a message indicating that they would like to be put on the wait list. The plots will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.