Days of Caring at Grand Acres Community Garden

On Saturday, as part of Days of Caring, United Way volunteers from the Young Leaders Society joined New Haven Land Trust gardeners to build a section living wall. A living wall is a fence that is built in such a way as to allow grasses to grow on and around it. The project took place in Fair Haven at the Grand Acres Community Garden. The design for the project was given to the Land Trust as a result of Architecture for Humanity holding a national Garden Design Competition for the best ecological and inexpensive design.  Although the materials for the project where inexpensive, there was no available budget to higher workers.  This created a call to action for the volunteer community to take up the initiative.

The project was kicked of by students at Hopkins. Instead of final exams, all Hopkins seniors do community service projects. Although much progress was made by the Hopkins students, there still remained significant work to be done on the wall. This Days of Caring volunteer event brought people together and they were able to move that project forward. Between 10am and 4pm the group was able to build approximately another 10 feet of living wall. The living wall is phase one of several three stage project. When the wall is complete volunteers will turn their attention to building a lit sculpture and a rain water collection system.

Pictured bellow: Design by contest winners Britcan Rogers and Derek Bryon