When Talia Wooten would look around her Circle Drive neighborhood on Flint’s southside, she’d often see residents engaging in the types of activities you’d participate in at a park. They just needed the park.
“I’ve dreamed of starting a community garden, and the neighbors on my street, I’ve seen their interaction with kids when they come around,” said Wooten, who has lived in the neighborhood for about 16 years. “Sometimes there’s people doing crafts in the yard or handing out popsicles on the corner. So the community is already saying that they wanted some kind of project to bring them together and have a space.”
To provide a space for those types of community interactions to expand and thrive, Wooten and a group of residents formed Friends of Ogema Triangle Park earlier this year. They applied for and received a grant from
The grant is from Genesee County Habitat for Humanity through the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Earlier this year, the Mott Foundation granted $600,000 to Habitat as part of its centennial celebration. The grant allows neighborhood groups and others to apply for small grants from the fund to activate public spaces.
The Ogema Triangle Park, located at 4451 Circle Drive near Ogama Avenue, was previously just a grass field, but the grant has allowed Wooten and approximately 20 volunteers so far to begin transforming it into a vibrant space with several community amenities.
“We started dreaming about it at the beginning of February,” Wooten said. “Now it’s starting to look like something. We laid our utility pad yesterday. We’re working on getting a water fill up, and maybe next weekend we’ll be out here planting things.”
The community space includes several raised garden beds that will grow produce, herbs, and root vegetables. Another space is designated as a pollinator garden. They’re also building a garden where people can harvest fresh cut flowers, and they’re building a sensory pathway that includes different textures under foot while walking on it and different fragrant scents from plants surrounding the pathway. They also plan to have sections with fruit trees, a pumpkin patch, a blueberry hedge, and perennials like rhubarb, strawberries, and asparagus. There will also be some teepees that people can sit inside with crops like peas and different types of climbing flowers growing on them. She also said they plan to apply for other grants in the future to be able to add a pavilion to the space.
“I think it’ll be a meeting space and (bring) a sense of community,” Wooten said. “I think this, in my mind, will be like a little Flint oasis. People can come and relax. I’d also like to have some programming in the future for nature classes and somatic healing classes and things out in the space to really activate it.”
Right now, other volunteers are welcome to help get the gardens ready for planting. Wooten said they’re planning on another work day on Saturday, June 27, and people interested in following project updates or learning about other volunteer opportunities can find information on the Facebook page.
Wooten’s personal passion for the project comes from her own background. Her mom, who is also helping with the project, is an avid gardener and handed that love down to her. She also has a background in education and community engagement that informs her work.
“Bringing the community together, I think that’s my skillset,” Wooten said.
In the time since work on the project began, Wooten said neighbors have been intrigued and excited about the addition to the area. Some have come and joined in on volunteer days, and others are already donating plants from their personal gardens to help populate the community gardens.
“I’ve met more neighbors in the last two weeks than I have in the last 16 years,” Wooten said. “Saturday, we had a full work day and neighbors were coming out of their house and picking up shovels and saying, ‘What can I do to help?’ And I’ve had people making donations from the neighborhood gardens, people have dug up their tomatoes and squash, and I’ve got strawberry plants. And sometimes I come home and there’s just more little plant presents on my porch to go in the garden.”
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