With the aid of a new piece of technology I was blessed to have invented, the Gardens Across Iowa! App™, this section the work of Civilian Restoration Corps’ Gardens Across Iowa! team is made feasible.

This team will build community food and herbal medicine gardens in every town and city throughout Iowa using the most efficient gardening techniques we can find. Gardens will be automated using timers, soaker hoses, and rain caches, and will be designed to produce as much as possible with as little work as possible. Our motto will be, “Less work, more food.” 

To get started, I will help set up a model garden using the most efficient gardening techniques I’ve been able to find throughout my decades of study and hands-on training in ethnoecology and innovative gardening techniques (see credentials and CV). The model garden will be monitored and improved upon until it is as efficient, and productive as possible. 

Municipalities will be allocated funding through the state, as appropriated by Iowa’s Legislature, in order to purchase viable land to set up community gardens. Locations near apartment complexes, and other residential areas where access to growing space is limited, will be prioritized. Placing raised beds atop concrete lots, and hauling soil in, is not out of the question, as we can reclaim a bit of the concrete jungle during this process.

Gardens Across Iowa crews will replicate the model garden in towns and cities all throughout the state, upon

Vouchers will allow wood for raised beds, sheds, hand tools, greenhouses, and other supplies may be purchased from any hardware store in Iowa, who will be provided a list of ideal products C.R.C. requires.

Horticulture specialists, Master Gardeners, and similar experts will be hired to manage the community gardens after they are built. They will be available to answer questions to community members involved in the gardens, through their private plots. Additionally, aesthetically-pleasing instructional signs will be set up within the gardens in order to teach community members who use the gardens how to properly maintain them, thus helping to reconnect Iowans with nature during an era wherein we have perhaps become perhaps too separated from nature in this way. As a child of the 1980s, I recall the joy I received as a child picking raspberries and blackberries from alleyways, wild plums that grew in urban areas, and cherry trees which once grew like treasures amidst the cities. One of many goals involved in the Gardens Across Iowa program is to bring that joy back to future generations so that it is never lost. We are blessed to have some of the best soil in the world within the State of Iowa. Let us not take this gift for granted, for it is perhaps our most precious resource.

Guarantee all Iowans the Right to Garden – Based on the premise that every person ought to have a place to legally stick seeds in the ground to grow food for subsistence purposes, C.R.C.’s Gardens Across Iowa initiative makes guaranteeing this right to all Iowans – including those of future generations – feasible. 

How this Benefits Iowans – Once it is set up and in place, Gardens Across Iowa will reduce dependence on welfare programs such as SNAP, solve environmental problems, reduce waste, and promote self-sufficiency. 

• Community gardens have been shown to raise the property value of nearby properties.
• Iowa currently has the highest level of food insecurity on record – in the state that has some of the best soil in the world! We must reduce the strain on Iowa’s churches and nonprofits.
• The derecho and drought that hammered Iowa in 2020 destroyed $802 million in corn, soybeans and pastures. Any Scout will tell you, “Be prepared!” Urban gardens are essential for disaster preparedness – especially in urban areas, where when disaster strikes, we’re sitting ducks! This plan changes that.  
• Iowans generate 2.8 million tons of solid waste per year. Gardens, however, aren’t wrapped in garbage! 
• Reduces dependence upon SNAP by empowering Iowans to live more self-sufficient lives. “Teach a man to fish.”

Below section in making.

Although Iowa recently passed a Right to Garden Act, in its current form it does not guarantee access to soil. Although it bars local governments from restricting people from growing, the vast majority of renters and homeless Iowans have nowhere to legally stick a seed in the ground. Many landlords do not allow (or do not have the space) to allow tenants to garden, and even though tenants who live on the south side of the building may have the option to grow on their porches, (a) tenants on the other sides of the apartments don’t tend to get enough sun, and (b) it is severely restricting to have to carry water back and forth from the sink instead of simply setting up hoses with automatic timers or soaker hoses – only things that people with access to a reasonable amount of soil tend to have access to.

Wild Willpower PAC proposes to expand and improve Iowa’s Right to Garden Act via creating a new public works program which will create thousands of jobs across the state: Civilian Restoration Corps. One of several tasks the CRC will be assigned to do is to set up community gardens in ever town and city across Iowa. Gardens will be set up using the most efficient techniques that can be researched, and will have hoses with automatic timers (for plants which require more water), as well as rain caches hooked up to soaker hoses (for plants which thrive via a slow, steady stream of water). 

Such gardens will ensure not only the right to garden, but also the right to access a garden. Although Iowa has guaranteed the right to garden, via the C.R.C., the state will take a proactive role to ensure all Iowans may access that right. This is how we (1) solve environmental issues, (2) end Iowa’s food insecurity crisis, (3) create a replicable model that can be used in other states and around the world, which will in turn solve their environmental issues and end food insecurity in those locations, and (4) create thousands of good paying jobs throughout the state which will lift the economy while getting people out into nature.

Please read Wild Willpower’s proposal to expand Iowa’s Right to Garden Act here.