Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Community Gardening topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Organizer describes how Busy Bee Garden Co‑op grew from a home ravine restoration
Summary
Chelsea Gastellum told listeners how a personal garden restoration along a storm‑drain ravine expanded into the Busy Bee Garden Co‑op, a volunteer network that installs native pollinator patches, runs seed libraries and coordinates community cleanups in Lemon Grove.
Chelsea Gastellum, organizer of the Busy Bee Garden Co‑op, described how the project began when she started removing invasive plants from a storm‑drain ravine behind her house and invited neighbors to help during the COVID lockdowns. She said the work grew informally, then became a rotating cooperative that visits one homeowner or public edge at a time to install native plants.
"We actually held, like, come over to my house, see my garden. Would you like something like this at your house?" Gastellum said, recounting how neighbors signed up to transform front yards and public pathways. She said homeowners buy the plants while volunteers provide labor and local leaders who wear badges guide new participants.
Gastellum described the group’s community scale and impact: projects that once involved five people expanded to events with 40–50 volunteers, allowing multi‑week efforts to finish in a few weekends. She emphasized inclusivity, noting apartment residents and people with limited mobility help with seed collection or plant‑care tasks. The organizer encouraged residents to join the public Busy Bee Facebook group for project announcements and said volunteers return borrowed green bins to homeowners after cleanup shifts.
