DONIGIAN PARK COMMUNITY POLLINATOR GARDEN
Project Summary:
The Donigian Park Community Pollinator Garden in Olneyville installed in the summer of 2024. This space was created in partnership between the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council and members of the Olneyville community. I initiated this project in partnership with India Jencks and Gianna Lourenco, with support and guidance from Building Futures, the WRWC River Rangers, Waleska and Luis Pinto, David Morales, Peter Dear, the University of Rhode Island, and many others. This community garden serves as a place for residents to learn about native plants to Rhode Island. It provides a space for people to share in gardening experiences within an urban area of Providence with limited amenities for renters to have access and ownership over green spaces. The hope is for this space to serve as an educational resource and model for people to become familiarized with eco-friendly gardening practices that could be translated to any environment in Greater Providence, large or small.
Proposal Process:
Before beginning the installation process, our team needed to obtain funding and approval. While my teammates secured grants from the Rhode Island Foundation and Bloom Rhode Island, I created architectural site plans for approval by the Providence Parks Department.
Preparing for Installation:
After securing support from our organization, the Providence Parks Department, and outside funding sources, we began to build necessary components of the garden. As WRWC’s Land Stewardship Coordinator, I managed the physical installation of the garden site. My coworkers, India and Gianna, managed the community engagement and educational aspects of the garden, respectively.
I designed garden beds for the site, keeping affordability, beauty, and function in mind. With the help of my supervisor, Peter Dear, I connected with Building Futures, an organization in Olneyville that provides apprenticeship to young people interested in working in the trades.
I prepared curriculum and design plans, and worked with a class of fifteen trade apprentices to build a total of twenty two garden beds, teaching the group skills in carpentry and fabrication over the span of one week. Five of the beds were installed at the community garden, while the remainder were distributed to other sites in Olneyville.
With lots of help from the River Rangers, WRWC’s park maintenance team, I also took the lead in preparing the site at Donigian Park for installation.
Steps involved in site preparation included removing litter and invasive knotweed, marking a clear delineation of the site’s edges, digging up grass, leveling the ground for the garden, digging holes for the installation of stump seats, and adding wood chips.
Garden bed construction at the Building Futures warehouse.
The site at Donigian Park prior to installation.
A partially completed garden bed, with a wooden frame and corrugated siding.
The location of Donigian Park in Providence.
Opening the Garden:
We opened the garden for use in June of 2024, holding a public celebration and gardening workshop to commemorate the occasion. At this workshop, community members put native flowering plants and grasses in the soil of the garden beds, creating a welcoming environment for people and pollinators alike. We distributed extra plants to workshop attendees. Our project partners, Waleska and Luis Pinto, led an instructional workshop on gardening practices, while I talked to the group about building garden beds from scratch. Attendees were able to use our new water barrel and stump seats.
This was the first in a series of community gatherings, site clean-ups, and workshops to be held at the Donigian Park Pollinator Garden.
The slideshow below contains images of the garden on its opening day, as well as at our second workshop focused on creating garden signage.
