I love what you can find on wiki. Here is a scratch pad from Bob Jones who isstarting up the Grow Not Lawns. Damn.... horrible sounding name compared to Grow don't Mow... Maybe I should trade mark it or someding. Here goes the important parts. But if you want to check it out its here.

Fantastic meeting yesterday morning. This meeting was pulled together with less than 24 hours notice and 10 people showed up! The bottom line is- We are excited about charging ahead to get organized to do this work even if we haven't figured out exactly what we will do or when or how. Much enthusiasm...

Summary/Conclusion? Based on the above comments of individuals at the meeting, it would seem like the main focus/interest is on filling the need to help people learn how to grow their own food locally with a preference toward doing organic/not chemical based gardening. Are we in general agreement about this? Is this the essence of a mission statement?

When to start this work? The consensus seemed to be to start slowly. Many are busy this summer. Some suggestions were to recruit people this summer, do research on what other groups are doing, develop a flyer or brochure in time for the fair 9/15 and have a realistic goal of doing garden prep for perhaps 10 people this fall. It will also give more individuals time to read the book, Food Not Lawns, by Heather Flores, which is excellent.

Local Group starts Food Not Lawns

We all know Fort Collins is a green town. Some times the Colorado State campus seems to be the emerald city with the amount of grass that is planted. Imagine if all that grass was food. Food not Lawns, wants to make this a reality. Maybe not the CSU campus but FNL wants to help you turn your lawn into something more. Here is a introduction from Bob Jones webpage entitled, Grow Food Not Lawns. Building Community One Garden at a Time

Growing healthy food is essential to our survival as a species. The idea of growing food not lawns is to encourage individuals to start a low cost organic vegetable garden to replace part of their lawn. Recently a group of us decided to start a Food Not Lawns (FNL) project in Fort Collins, Co. Our goals are to increase local food production, build healthy soils, increase self sufficiency, reduce the amount of water wasted on lawns and encourage the sharing of excess produce to build community. We will do this through education and hands on work helping individuals to start and maintain vegetable gardens.

For more information visit
FNL

My favorite part, "Backyard vegetable gardens is an idea whose time has come again. During WWI, the Depression and WWII, they were known as Victory Gardens and were needed and supplied 40% of food needed. Now the incentive is higher food prices and the desire for healthy food. These backyard gardens have the potential to be a key component in local food production along with community supported agriculture (CSA’s), community gardens and farmer’s markets."

Grow Not Mow
Avantgardner