Garden Party

This past Saturday, March 21st, was one of our group’s most productive filmings to date. Not only did we get some of those suggested wide shots establishing the garden’s space from Nick’s ladder (Nick’s VW van is a virtural Mary Poppin’s style carpet bag of items. You can find everything in there. Twenty watering cans? Done. How about a wooden-handled child’s size shovel? A full sized ladder? No problem.), but we also collected several valuable interviews. We re-interviewed Johanna, a Kidworks employee and garden participant; re-interviewed The Grain Project’s Co-founder Lara; conducted a dual language interview with a women from the apartments next to the garden; and interviewed Bella, a regular garden participant. Bella’s interview may be one of our best so far, as she was able to articulate, from a participant’s perspective much of what we’ve been thinking and feeling over the best few months.

In addition to our “fruitful” interview, we collected a solid amount of action footage. There were far more people in the garden on Saturday than what we are used to. Several new families from the near-by apartments came by, so we were able to talk to people about their first garden experience.

Overall, we are optimistic about filming this coming Saturday’s 9th Annual Cesar Chavez Day of Service/the Jerome Park Garden’s one-year anniversary (March 28th). We hope to conduct more interviews with garden participants and document the movement toward service, dignity, and community growth that this event represents.


“From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength.” Cesar Chavez