Last night, March 5, 2015 @ 6:30pm (Thursday) was the first community meeting for input on 771 Rengstorff park design. Thank you to everyone that came to the community meeting and expressed your support for shared gardens.
It was really amazing to hear so much support for creating a wonderful space open to the public that preserves and maintains the existing elements such as the trees and garden. There were many thoughts shared from residents and seemed to echo a vision of a space that is natural with paths and benches, a shared community or demonstration garden likely where the existing garden is, and historical features like the immigrant house and highlighting our agrarian past. People really wanted it to be bicycle and pedestrian friendly for access (yay!), and a learning space for kids (and everyone) to explore and learn about their natural world and food. Hopefully the bee hives that are there can stay as they too are an important part of the ecosystem.
Some features that make a garden a great fit for this space:
- Already has existing fruit bearing trees (100+). Last night an arborist counted 161 trees and 60 are of heritage size.
- It would create a community gathering space focused around food and growing food.
- It already has bee hives on the property which make a garden better.
- So much potential for creating a garden program for the community that includes people of all ages, kids, cooking classes, gardening classes, weekly volunteering opportunities.
- Soil&Water has funding to create the garden and has support from the Kiwanis Club of Mountain View and the Los Altos Community Foundation.
- This is our first opportunity for more garden in Mountain View; if this succeeds, there will be more gardens in the city.
