Garden Club Emergency Meeting
June 28, 2000The following is a summary of the emergency club meeting held on 06/28/00.
Jonathan Dorfan, Jerry Jobe, and Greg Lowe met with members of the garden last Wednesday (6/28 at noon) after Jeff Corbett saw some folks setting up to do some soil sampling in the area between the Training Center and the garden plots.
The scoop is this. SLAC is looking for a place to build a user's dormitory (a building vital to the scientific program, especially considering the price of housing and limited availability in the area). Since this building is still in a very preliminary stage of development, it has not been publicized yet. While SLAC did not even suggest the garden area, when the people with the money (i.e. Stanford) saw the garden area they thought it would be worth considering for the building. So, soil sampling is underway to determine if the area is suitable for a building of the size intended (25,000 sq ft). We should know in a couple months if the garden area is suitable. If it is, the Training Center will also be impacted. They are checking on other sites as well. And, as you may know, building sites tend to skip around until they finally find a home, so nothing is definite at this point. However, if the garden area is selected (a decision should be final before next spring), and the building will eliminate most of the plots, the plan is to relocate the garden -- but to where and at what physical labor and cost to us, I don't know. Greg Lowe will keep in touch with me about the site location process.
Jonathan apologized for not including the garden club members into the loop. The addition of the garden area to the list of possible sites was very recent, and they hoped to get through the first phase of soil testing before bringing us in on it. He and the committee did not know that we, the gardeners, put our own assets into the garden in terms of fencing and amendments. Jonathan has also commissioned a site plan, to look for locations for future projects so this is less of an issue in the future. He is also open to the idea of moving the "radiation" fence to allow for more area outside the fence, but this won't be ready in time for this building site.
My recommendation is to not put any money into your plot until a resolution is reached. This crop should be okay, but the spring planting is not a given.
-- Ruth
mcdunn
04/12/03