Turning Your Green Space into Edible Garden Space

Cause leader Roger Doiron lives to fight for gardens. Two weeks ago, Roger, through his organization Kitchen Gardeners International,  created a petition on Causes.com supporting the rights of a two homeowners to maintain a garden in their front yard on their property. The focus is on town officials in Drummondville, Quebec who declared a garden, pictured here, illegal. The petition asks these officials to make front yard gardens completely legal and it has been signed by more than 15,000 people worldwide. Yesterday, Roger spoke to us about the campaign’s progress and Kitchen Gardeners International’s grants and scholarship program launching later this year.

Roger understands the power of social media to propel a campaign to great heights, and he wanted to use Causes to help turn this cause into a global one. “We had good global coverage and I thought that we could do something that could be bilingual and much more international to bring to bear the goodwill from the global community.”

Two weeks later, Roger’s petition is generating waves of attention through international support and a profile post from the website Boing Boing.

This isn’t the first pro-gardening campaign on Roger’s resume. In 2008, his organization petitioned the White House to transform a portion of the front yard on D.C’s iconic real estate into a garden with edible harvest. Roger used Causes’ first generation petition tool in 2009 to help gain momentum and it proved successful.

Roger is confident that town officials in Drummondville will meet with garden owners to forge a solution, and he’s optimistic his petition campaign will culminate in real world results. To show support, leave a comment on his petition page or share the page with your friends.

We’ll be checking in with Roger to give you the full story of his success later in August. Stay tuned!

Social Good for the Outdoors

Simultaneously, Roger is working on a campaign to win a $5,000 grant through GOOD Magazine’s Do Good Outdoors campaign, which funds social good projects that focus on the great outdoors. Roger told us, “There are 150 entries that are coming from organized nonprofits and some other more informal efforts on projects that will take place outdoors. We’re gearing up for a new program called Sow It Forward that is a grants and partnership program.”

The idea for the Sow It Forward project came about after Roger’s TEDx talk about gardening in 2011. “One of the things that came out of that talk is roughly $30K worth of supplies was donated to us. It was so substantial that we decided we could build a program around it.”

Roger’s idea is currently in 3rd place out of 150 entries and there is only one day left to vote. If you’re interested, you can click here, vote for Sow It Forward, and share with your friends. The $5,000 grant will ensure that Roger’s gardening program will reach audiences far and wide.