RAP Celebrates 10 Years of the Community Garden<\/p>\n
For a decade, the small garden at the corner of Azalea Terrace and Park Street, sitting within the footprint of Willow Branch Park, has served as a gathering place and growing space for neighborhood gardeners.<\/p>\n
The Riverside Avondale Preservation (RAP) Community Garden celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, marking a decade of growth, literal and figurative, for the neighbors who tend it. Operating as a public-private partnership between the City of Jacksonville\u2019s Parks and Recreation Department, JaxParks and RAP, the garden currently boasts 32 plots maintained by 52 gardeners.<\/p>\n
To mark the garden\u2019s milestone anniversary, with major support from Bold City Properties, all the wooden garden beds were replaced. Later this fall, new educational signage created by Carson Schwab, a student from UNF\u2019s Environmental Leadership Program, will be installed to help educate visitors about seasonal produce, insects and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Community Garden is a gathering point for so many people from this neighborhood and beyond,\u201d said RAP Executive Director Shannon Blankinship. \u201cI\u2019m proud that RAP has continued to manage and operate a public space that means so much to so many people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The garden first opened in April 2016 and was designed by Dorina Bakari of Jacksonville\u2019s American Institute of Architects through its Emerging Design Professionals subcommittee.<\/p>\n
The future is bright for the Community Garden, with plans to add a Kids Pizza Garden next spring, providing a free, interactive space for children to harvest their favorite pizza toppings like tomatoes, peppers and herbs. Those interested in supporting this new addition can make donations at riversideavondale.networkforgood.com\/projects\/214731-general-donation-form<\/a>, noting that the gift is for the Kids Pizza Garden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RAP Celebrates 10 Years of the Community Garden For a decade, the small garden at the corner of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-446108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}