At Sunday’s general meeting, we had the pleasure of meeting Claudia Joseph of New York Permaculture Exchange. We were talking about fences, and how communities can work to make their public spaces truly accessible to all the publics near them. Claudia shared two working radical models that she is a part of:

The Garden of Union, which is gardened communally, gives keys to its locks to anyone that goes through an orientation with a garden volunteer, and has 150+ members.

The garden at the Old Stone House, which has no fence at all and is gardened with the participation of students at the neighboring middle school.

These are two places we definitely recommend you check out. We would also love to hear about and share more stories about sucessfully inviting and public spaces. We really don’t <3 fences.