Past Events

JUNE 2009

Corporate Workdays
Google Legal Department:  On June 10th, approximately 40 members of the Google Legal Department came out to the Collective Roots Garden as a part of Google’s Global Volunteer Effort week.  In the garden, volunteers helped clean up the compost area, replanted Earth Boxes, mulched weeded and turned garden beds, planted corn, beans, winter squash, flowers, eggplants, melons and basil!  At our new chicken coop site, volunteers worked with Executive Director, Wolfram, to install fencing!  In the greenhouse, volunteers started many varieties of flowers, greens, vegetables and herbs!  Many thanks to all participants!  Many thanks to Grace Kawahira for organizing the day’s event!

Intuit: On June 17th, about 20 members of Intuit came out to the garden for a morning of team building and garden maintenance.  Teams worked to weed our garden beds, plant beans to climb over the willow structure, plant tomatillos and continue work on the chicken fence.  The teams set goals for themselves, measuring their success along the way, making note of weeding progress, mulching thickness, and the straightness of the chicken fence.  Scott, the dedicated V.P., bicycled up some ice cream smoothies for everyone at the end of the work day!  Many thanks to Kevin Falini and Mary Cefalu for organizing the event. 

4th Annual Physical Activity and Nutrition Forum: June 19th
Katie Gadsby, CR’s Nutrition and Garden Education Coordinator attended this conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco.  The meeting’s focus was on reconnecting communities to the Bay Area Outdoors with professionals participating from the CA Dept of Public Health and from California State Parks.   The first half of the day was filled with interesting speakers like Doug McConnell host of ‘Open Road’ and previous host of Bay Area Backroads and Dr. Tomas Aragon, an epidemiologist for the city of San Francisco and an professor at UC Berkeley.  The presentations focused on bringing nutrition, physical activity and parks to the public health table. 

The second half of the day, was split into sessions specific to public parks and Dept. of Public Health discussions.  I attended the Local Food and Nutrition Education Action Committee FNE Action Committee meeting and heard from two amazing youth programs in Berkeley, East Bay Asian Youth Center and the Ecology Center.  Both were very inspirational programs and will be an amazing resource for our new Food  Justice Leaders Program.  The session began with Asara Tsehai, an incredible motivational speaker who discussed the 9 principles to health and well being and is something I would aspire to live by on a daily basis.   She is the author of ‘Principles of Radiant Health’.  --Katie Gadsby

School Group Volunteers
On June 18th, 13 students, 2 high school students and a group of adults from the SNAKE Camp (Science and Nature Adventures for Kid Explorers) volunteered at Collective Roots.  SNAKE Camp is an environmental summer volunteer program for grades 1-5, and it is located at Keys School in Palo Alto.  

The campers turned and sifted compost, prepared beds for summer vegetables, made paper pots and planted seeds, watered the garden and planted flowers along vegetable beds.  To celebrate all of our hard work, the campers created a delicious fruit salad from seasonal fruits as well as blackberries and loganberries that the campers harvested the day before at Webb Ranch.  We topped off our fruit salad with yogurt and granola to create a nutritious snack.  Thank you SNAKE campers for your your wonderful energy  and for your contributions to our garden--we hope to see you again soon!