SOME PEOPLE ARE SIMPLY NOT SATISIFIED to leave things as they are. Such as the Randwick Organic Community Garden crew, for instance, especially those there that are part of the Arts In Community Gardens team.

The community gardeners had acquired a grant to buy rainwater tank in which to store rain falling on the adjacent stable roof. Now, there it sat — a shiny, bulbous, 21,000 litre plastic projection like some anomalous fungi emerging from its slumber in the earth. Supplemented by the gardener’s existing, smaller tank, the community garden now has the capacity to store around 30,000 litres. The Randwick community garden is entirely rainfed.

The new tank was installed but — it was all too plain. That big green surface just begged to become the canvas for a work of collective art. This would be the Randwick garden’s first excursion into community arts. It had already been the location of mosaic-making and a course in botanical drawing.

So, the gardeners set to work and soon that shiny, green but all-too-plain, curved surface had become a botanical illustration all of its own.

Now, when passers-by walk along the footpath above the community garden, that tank stands out like some anomolous, primitivist, multi-hued artform to bring visual excitement to a little corner of Randwick.

All across the nation people are converting their front and backyards, vacant lots, and other spaces into thriving and productive food gardens. To help encourage new gardeners along this verdant path, The 350 Garden Challenge will bring thousands together over a a single weekend, May 15-16, to transform 350+ Sonoma County landscapes into bountiful gardens. The goal is to save water, link local food production and carbon savings, grow food and habitat, promote greywater, and encourage lawn to food transformations. The project is inspired in part by the 350.org international campaign to find and implement solutions to climate change.

It’s clear that the time for growing food through community is here and cities across California are joining efforts to save water, unite neighborhoods, and build a strong movement for local food production. The Victory Garden Foundation in Oakland aims to match Sonoma County’s Challenge and install 350 gardens over the same weekend in May. In Santa Monica, the third annual 100 Garden Challenge, pioneered by Gardens of Gratitude, will take place April 24 and 25.

“Sonoma County’s 350 Garden Challenge seeks to inspire our citizens to create a healthy, homegrown food supply, save water and cut greenhouse gas emissions,” said Trathen Heckman, Director of Daily Acts, a Petaluma-based nonprofit that provides education about greywater, home food production, and a range of sustainable living skills.

Key projects to be undertaken over the weekend include:

On the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, April 22, 20 members of the U.S. Coast Guard will revitalize a garden at Burbank Heights Apartments in Sebastopol; community members will plant this garden on May 15 and 16.

Green Sangha, a nonprofit group of environmental activists, will install a model garden at Community Market natural foods store near Santa Rosa Junior College.

Wine barrels, plants, and soil will be distributed to the nonprofit community organization Nuestra Voz to install container gardens at 60 households at Spring Village, a low-income housing complex in Boyes Hot Springs.

The 350 Garden Challenge initiative, which also seeks to educate and empower community and support local businesses, is a collaboration of Daily Acts, iGROW Sonoma, GoLocal, and Living Mandala, in conjunction with the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) and dozens of other community groups and companies. SCWA, in turn, has provided a generous $25,000 matching grant for this project.

Want to get involved? Join the 350 Challenge Facebook page. Garden sites and participation is being coordinated online and in individual community meetings and events. Get ready to dig in!

Naomi Starkman Huffington Post

Water Rhapsody is rapidly increasing its’ footprint around South Africa, with coverage in six of the nine provinces of South Africa. With the first dealers opening in the Western Cape, the Water Rhapsody network has spread to Gauteng, KZN, Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga. This week negotiations began to secure a dealer in the Limpopo province and this is expected to come on stream later in the year. Limited opportunities still exist in all the provinces for ecopreneurs to open their own businesses in Water Conservation. “The demand has been far greater than we ever expected” says Charles Bryant who hails the water business as a sunrise industry. Demand for grey water systems and rainwater harvesting systems is growing in leaps and bounds as the South African public come to realise that there are no more opportunities to dam any more rivers; most of which no longer reach the sea.