ARROWWOOD GARDENS
(267)460-1034
SUNDROPS
CSH
COMMUNITY SUPPORTED HORTICULTURE
"It is now within the power of individual gardeners to do something
that we all dream of doing: to make a difference."
- Douglas Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home.
In the fall of 2023, Arrowwood Gardens will pilot a new program in the spirit of Community Supported Agriculture by offering membership-based "Wildflower Farm Shares".
The SUNDROPS CSH program will allow its members to choose from a variety of native plants and/or ecological services customized to their gardening needs. SUNDROPS members will not only bring beauty and biodiversity to their own gardens with their shares, but by partnering with Arrowwood, members will also help to grow plant donations for local community projects.
For those unfamiliar with CSA's, here's a little bit of background. Since the 1980's, as people increasingly seek healthy and sustainable alternatives to big agri-business, long-distance shipping, pollution, wasteful packaging, GMO's, etcetera, CSA farms and the Community Supported Agriculture movement have all the while grown in popularity. CSA's offer their members convenience, meaningful community connections, and healthy farm-fresh food at a reasonable cost. SUNDROPS CSH is our way of trying to mesh the proven CSA model based on cooperative and sustainable community values with the traditional landscaping and horticulture trades.
As our network grows, our CSH members will take part in a broader effort to fortify our regional ecosystems well beyond our own gardens. Formerly disparate landscapes will soon begin to form an ever-more interconnected tapestry of native habitats as members create a growing preservation collective. This cooperative approach benefits SUNDROPS members and planet alike through:
Preservation! Preserving vulnerable, threatened, and endangered native plants by hedging multiple colonies of a given species against potential losses.
Conservation! Offsetting time, fuel, and carbon emmissions by growing and sourcing plant-material as locally as possible.
Saving Money! Stretching our plant-dollars for all within the network, wholesale growing and distribution for a large group of members will offset typical retail markups.
Collective Community Greening! Arrowwood multiplies the ecological contributions of members and their gardens by spreading the biodiversity from our yards out into the wider regional landscape in the form of plant donations to community projects.
Increasing Biodiversity! We are proliferating locally-provenant plant species back into the region to strengthen our ecosystems against further declines in vulnerable populations of birds, bees, butterflies, other beneficial insects, and multitudes of native fauna and microfauna.
To learn more about SUNDROPS CSH membership and benefits, please contact us and write "Sundrops" in the subject line. Thanks and happy gardening!