Harvest Festival Brings JOY to Westlawn Gardens Residents!

On Saturday, October 16th t

he sounds of celebration were heard from the Westlawn Community Garden space! CNI's Northwest Fresh Food Access Council hosted Harvest Festival from 3pm-6pm to celebrate the end of a great growing season, offer some wellness activities for neighbors, and to get residents signed up for a garden plot in spring of 2022. Over 150 community members came out to enjoy the event and celebrate the end of a great growing season!

Many neighborhood partners came together to offer a wide variety of activities for Harvest Festival! CNI's garden educator, Sandy Short, prepared enough chili to feed 100 people and it was gone by 4:30pm! Safe and Sound Inc. came out to share their resources and brought lawn games and played sports with adults and youth, Teens Grow Greens staff and youth members volunteered on the date help attendees make their own paper and prints, as well as treated kids who made it through the garden maze to a bag of candy. Free flowers were given to any neighbor who wanted one, which brought lots of smiles to attendees who brought a plant home to grace their windowsills!

Tyler from The Ultimate Farm Collaborative was a volunteer DJ for Harvest Festival, and there were some celebratory dances done during the afternoon! The garden space was filled with creativity and laughter from the pumpkin painting station, which attracted children and adults alike. Hundreds of pumpkins were decorated during Harvest Festival! To start the growth of the spring 2022 garden season, 500 tulip bulbs were planted by adults and children who attended the festival. It was great to see neighbors planting, and residents will be given a tulip in the spring as a gift from the community garden. The event also featured an educational table by Westlawn Gardens resident Bridget, who shared fruit-infused water with guests and talked about the importance of choosing healthy beverages. Vanessa, who is also a Westlawn Gardens resident, held a resource table to share information the Best Baby Zone initiative with attendees as well.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for Harvest Festival on Saturday October 16th to close out the 2021 gardening season and to plant a seed to start the new season in 2022!

Many thanks to so many wonderful partners, including:

Westlawn Resident Council

HACM

Choice Neighborhood Initiative

Teens Grow Greens

City of Milwaukee Fresh Food Access Fund

UWM Institute for Systems Change and College of Nursing

Safe & Sound

MU MAPs Program

Ultimate Farm Collaborative

MKE Good Food Bus

Best Babies Zone