Exciting Clarksville Community Garden/Haskell House News!

The Austin Parks Foundation has awarded a $26,500 Austin City Limits Festival Grant to the Clarksville Community Garden (CCG), which is located behind the Haskell House. The money will fund the creation of the Haskell House Heritage Garden, where the kind of food Clarksville residents cultivated and prepared in the late 19th century will be grown. Members of the CCG will plant and maintain the Heritage Garden.

The Heritage Garden will deepen the understanding of visitors to the House about life in early Clarksville and build a connection between the CCG and the House. Clarksville Community Development Corporation operates the House as a museum that tells the story of the people who lived in the House, the challenges of life in early Clarksville, and the history of Clarksville into the 1980s.

Ashante Reese, assistant professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at UT-Austin and author of “Black Food Geographies,” will serve as a Heritage Garden consultant.

The grant will also pay for bamboo eradication at the House and allow water access for the CCG to be separated from water access for the House. The CCG is contributing $2,500 from its treasury toward these two efforts.

Big congratulations and thanks to Kurt Schmidt, a CCG member, who spearheaded the grant-writing effort!!!!!