GKH 2016 School and Community Garden Sponsorship Recipients

I am sure that many of you out there this past summer watched the Summer Olympics. You watched gymnasts perform mind-boggling acts of human strength and skill, and runners run faster than you could possibly imagine. In short, you watch people do amazing and inspirational things. The Olympics are a showcase of all that is good and awe inspiring about the human race. What you may not know is that in order for those amazing athletes to accomplish what they do, they need to find companies and organizations that will support them. The companies and organizations are called sponsors.

You may not realize it, but you see sponsors in a great many places. NASCAR cars are covered in stickers that display who their sponsors are. Athletes, both amateur and professional, have sponsors that help pay for all things big and small. Even writers and artists can find sponsors who will support them so that they can pursue their craft.

We here at Gardening Know How got to thinking one day: Why should athletes and artists be the only ones to follow their passions by being supported by others? What if we became sponsors for gardens that help to spread the love and importance of gardening to the public? And so, our Sponsorship Program was born.

The staff here at Gardening Know How is excited to announce this year's recipients of the Gardening Know How's School and Community Garden Sponsorships. This year, we were able to support 10 gardens with a $1,000 sponsorship each. The gardens selected this year represent an amazing array of the types of school and community gardens out there. They range from urban to rural - gardens that help children or older adults and seniors, gardens having a specific purpose and others that are just making a place where people can garden. Some are gardens that have not been constructed yet and gardens that have been around for quite some time and just about everything in-between. The one thing all of these gardens have in common is that they know gardening is important to the lives of everyday people.

We hope that our sponsorship program inspires you to help a garden out too. In all likelihood, there is a garden club, a school garden or a community garden in your area that could use your time, money or expertise to help them achieve their missions. You, too, can be a garden sponsor in little or big ways.

And with that, I am proud to announce this year's GKH School and Community Garden Sponsorship recipients:

· Bedford Community Garden - Bedford, OH

· City Language Vision Charter - Los Angeles, CA

· Community Gardens of Santa Clarita - Santa Clarita Valley, CA

· Forest Park Elementary School Pollinator Garden and Outdoor Classroom Project - Portland, OR

· Garden of Health - Souderton, PA

· New Town Success Zone - Jacksonville, FL

· Phoenix Academy - High Point, NC

· Rural Neighborhoods - Florida City, FL

· Focus on Youth's Seeds of Hope - Portland, OR

· The Community Kitchen - Republic, MO

Over the next year, we will be posting a blog post featuring each of these projects and the wonderful work they are doing in their communities to promote gardening.