In soliciting participation from the community to help make Q Gardens a reality, we’ve been fortunate enough to get to know a number of incredibly talented and passionate neighbors. One of these neighbors is Amy Hilliker Tobin, a landscape designer and Ditmas Park resident. Amy was kind enough to lend her talents and come up with designs for what the lot will become in the near future. You can view these plans in the gallery connected to this post. She has this to say about the design:

I love community gardens: they bring together like-minded individuals who want to cultivate both produce and community relations. After initially meeting with Anne and Ali, my mind was reeling with ideas for the space. The site’s odd triangular shape definitely added a unique challenge. My goals for the community garden were to use the space creatively to provide as much food as possible for the community, while serving as a place of relaxation, (fun!) work, and learning. It’s extremely gratifying when people, especially children, can come into the space and touch/smell/taste the crops they themselves planted.

For my design of the community garden, I wanted to take advantage of the space by using vertical growing methods and by making areas multipurpose. To be cost-effective and eco-conscious we hope to use as much recycled material as possible. A-framed stacked pallets will be used as planters and most benches will serve as additional storage space. Our local construction friends have been eager to build the custom native plant beds. What’s also nice is that we’ll be able to represent an array of cultures through the crops that are grown, which again brings a sense of community.

We are diligently working towards gaining access to the lot so that we can get to work on turning Amy’s wonderful design into reality, and hope to begin our build in the fall of 2013. Keep an eye on the site and the blog for continued updates on the status of our efforts, and to find out how you can get involved.