Garden Station - Dayton 4.68

Garden Station was a community garden, urban farm, art park and sustainable living education center in downtown Dayton created by over 3000 volunteers and over 300 organizations and donations from the community. It was possibly the largest and most diverse all-volunteer community project in the history of Dayton. We taught over 60 free classes each year to over 1000 attendees on a wide variety of sustainable living topics. Over 500 students and organizations took educational tours of Garden Station every year. We grew produce in permanent, no-till raised beds to preserve healthy soil structure. Everything was grown organically without chemical pesticides or herbicides. We built healthy soil by adding compost and aerobic compost tea and used crop rotation and companion planting to help prevent disease and pests. Permaculture principals of earthworks water harvesting and permanent ground covers were incorporated in our market crops and we had a food forest of medicinal and edible herbs, berries, nuts and fruit; as well as examples of sustainable building techniques including straw bale, pounded tire, green roof and bottle walls. We received national recognition and may have been the most "liked" community garden on facebook. Many communities sent representatives to tour and model something like Garden Station in their own community. Our EarthFest became the largest Earth Day event in southwest Ohio with as many as 5000 attendees.

Despite all our acclaim the Dayton City Commissioners, Mayor and City Manager evicted Garden Station October 31, 2016 to make way for potential unnamed commercial development. The land was given to an out of state developer for ten dollars, even though over 4000 residents signed a petition to keep Garden Station for the community and over a hundred residents attended city commission meetings to protest. None of the City Commissioners or Mayor even responded to our offer to a guided tour of the space to understand what the community was protesting losing.

Lisa Helm is the founder of Garden Station art park and community garden, which reflects her interest in permaculture, green construction and outsider art. Garden Station has involved over 300 community organizations and businesses and over 3000 volunteers in its creation since 2008. Since then Lisa has helped form a Dayton Urban Farmer’s group, organized local Parking Day events, a Sustainable Living Workshop series, and an Earth Day festival and has been a speaker for gardening and planning conferences and sustainable living events at the state and national level.
Lisa holds a Master of Music degree from Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and taught for ten years in several colleges and universities as well as art magnet schools. She is Permaculture Design Certified, a Master Organic Gardener, has taken classes in natural building at Blue Rock Station and urban farming with Will Allen and Jean-Martin Fortier, and is a graduate of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance Seed School. In 2013 Lisa and her partner, George, opened “Dayton Urban Green”, a sustainable living shop at the public market to provide supplies for the workshop series and eco-friendly options for everyday items.