Blog 17 - Interview 3 Reflection

Cathy Morrison and Jody Hudson prepare to present their beautifully appointed information booth to a West Pasadena Resident's Association annual meeting - as the onlooker, you can see how branding is essential in becoming well-known  to a more permanent extent and credible

1. What is the most important thing I learned from the interview?  

- I have interlaced a bigger picture of urban farming with terminologies, an observed passion for the philosophy behind the idea, and possible contacts I can get in touch with over the course of these next weeks in search of further meaning behind my essential question and a diversity of answers that respond to the question in all respects.  More specifically, I was able to grasp onto the pathos-ingrained approach in seeing how a community garden provides an outlet and opportunity to a community’s potential in being unified and engaged.  To this end, I have now begun to treat the practice as a small business, whose conscious effort to reap environmental and social justice benefits reminds society where its food hails from and whose ‘modified’ farming techniques make the idea adaptable to most any urban environment.  A truly exciting part of my interview was seeing the possibility in, and Cathy’s dream in working with, a Community Agricultural Sharing program, like that of Muir Ranch - a Pasadena high school community garden - as far as “selling the idea” and incentivizing the art are concerned.

2.  How has your approach to interviewing changed over the course of your senior project?

- I have become much more patient with my interviewees and have learned to adapt my questions with their answers to previous ones dished out, so that a conversation rather than a formatted, onenote interview is allowed to sprout and flourish like a borage plant.

I would love to thank the resourceful visionary Cathy Morrison, head of the Pasadena Community Gardens, for taking time in her busy and revolutionizing schedule to meet with me at the gardening site, where 53 raised beds and a couple of terrace chairs that met my gaze further clarified my view of the potential held by urban farming (and its practice through a community garden).

• I urge the reader to please check out this magical place, at the foot of Huntington Hospital and in the thicket of a bustling residential neighborhood, via its webiste: http://www.pasadenacommunitygardens.org

Cathy Morrison,  chair of the Pasadena Community Gardens' Steering Committee, elated at a 2011 meeting with Citizens Architects Group (CAG)