March’s First Friday at LemonDrop will be a fundraiser for the Drury Community Garden Club and their pilot project. We would love to have some great pieces to hang in the gallery that night. We are calling on the artist community to create pieces in their medium of choice, but under the theme of community togetherness. We want the art to reflect Garden Club’s goal of healthy living, community pride, and using local resources. However those ideas take form in your art, go for it! Price the pieces as you see fit and bring them to LemonDrop by Tuesday, Feb. 28. Contact Moriah Hillson at 816.509.4208 or moriah@lemondrop.org to arrange a time to drop off your work at LD.

Here is a bit more info about the club to give you a better idea of what’s up:

The Drury Community Garden Club is a joint venture between the Behavioral Science and Architecture departments to facilitate the creation of community gardens in low income neighborhoods around Springfield. The goal is to show communities how gardens can be an economic, environmental, social, and health benefit to its members. Their first project began in October 2011: a garden in the Grant Beach neighborhood, the lowest income neighborhood in the city, which stretches from Chestnut to Commercial and Boonville to Kansas Expressway (this includes LemonDrop!). The Garden Club is partnering with the Grant Beach Neighborhood Association and the Grant Beach Garden Committee to winterize, construct compost bins, plant various food and flowers, host garden-related community events, and bring pride and togetherness to the community members. They are also working with Weaver Elementary located directly across the street from the garden by creating a program to teach students about nutrition and healthy living. The curriculum will show kids how they can grow vegetables and other plants in the garden or their own homes. The gardens built are meant to benefit the community, not the club. Garden Club provides knowledge and resources, and gets the community excited and invested in working the garden and spending time together. Then they move along to the next site so the community members can enjoy the fruits of their labor… literally.

That is the gist of it. They don’t have much publicity and want to involve volunteers outside of Drury that are interested, and hopefully form some resourceful connections with other like-minded Springfielders.