"Accessible Gardens" workshop presented at NOFA Summer Conference Aug. 2010

This weekend, Karen Romanowski, of Brookfield Farm, Amherst, and I presented our workshop "A Garden for All: Building Community Gardens that are Accessible to All People" at the annual NOFA (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) Summer Conference 2010 held at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Massahusetts. There were over 200 workshops at this year's conference. It was a truly rewarding experience to offer this workshop and to see how deeply interested the participants were in making their communities more accessible.
We created this workshop to share with others the way in which one person -- Patricia -- helped to create a space that welcomes all to share in the gifts that gardening offers. We hope to keep that inspiration alive and keep sharing her gift to us by presenting at other conferences and to organizations, groups, schools, nursing homes, veterans homes, hospitals, and cities and towns. 
Earlier this year, we also presented at the Federation for Children with Special Needs "Visions of Community 2010" conference in Boston, Massachusetts. 


A Garden for All – Building a Community Garden that is Accessible to All People 
Presenter: Theresa Vincent, Parent, & Karen Romanowski, RN, Co-owner, Brookfield Farm, Amherst. 
How a family’s wish for meaningful access into the community for their daughter with multiple disabilities spurred a local farm to build an accessible garden that would be open to all people. Utilize ideas from this small-scale project, brainstorm creative solutions to problems of access, and be inspired to envision and create simple accessible gardens and recreational spaces in your own local communities.