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151 The practice story Marcia Eames-Sheavly tells in this profile centers on her work of organizing a community garden project at an elementary school in Freeville, New York. Her story is instructive and deeply moving, on several levels. Working as a mother and community volunteer as well as an academic professional with expertise in horticulture, Marcia helps us to see how academic and public work can be integrated in mutually beneficial ways. She tells us how and why she aimed to facilitate a collective process of creating a community garden in a way that was “as inefficient as possible.” By being “in the thick of” a messy, time-consuming public work project, she shows us what it can mean for academic professionals to negotiate the dilemma of the relation of expertise and democracy in a public-regarding way. My title is senior extension associate in the Department of Horticulture. I’m half-time youth development, and then another almost quarter-time teaching in the department . So I’m not quite three-quarter time. I’ve been in this system since 1987. I started out in Cornell Cooperative Extension in Saratoga County, came here, and my position has evolved. I have had the title that I have now for about four or five years. The piece that I think is most relevant for what we’re going to be talking about today is that I am the 4-H garden-based learning program leader. All of my energies are spent doing youth development extension work. I coordinate and develop resources for a statewide garden -based learning effort through Extension. I also work a lot nationally with folks to find out what’s happening in our garden-based learning arena nationwide. I work very closely with the American Horticultural Society, for example. But primarily here in New York State, it’s the coordination and leadership for the garden-based learning effort. C H A P T E R 8 To Be in There, in the Thick of It A Profile of Marcia Eames-Sheavly Senior Extension Associate, Department of Horticulture, Cornell University Interview conducted by Lael Gerhart, April 2, 2004 C H A P T E R E I G H T 152 In our department, everyone loves plants. It’s neat that we’re all crazy about plants, and we garden at home. For many people in the department, it’s both their vocation and avocation . What gets me excited is not so much the plants, but the plants as an avenue through which we can cultivate human and community well-being. I mean that just really thrills me. It’s accessible, it’s inexpensive, it’s time honored. It’s amazing the change that plants and gardens can make in a community and in an individual’s life. That’s what gets me going. It’s not just the plants but how they have an impact on us, on a number of levels. My goal is to see that impact happen with young people and with adults, cradle to grave. Babies can interact with plants, preschoolers can have an experience with gardens, right on up through older folks who can be impacted by the garden. I like to see it across the life span. In terms of the kinds of impacts that plants and gardens have on us, often we think about food—for example, in this department, healthy food. Or we’ll talk about the act of growing plants as being healthy for us, and I think that’s important. But it’s just so much more. Plants have an impact on our well-being just by virtue of being beautiful. Sometimes I think we are almost embarrassed about that as a community of horticulturists. We think it’s kind of a fluffy thing. I don’t think it is. I think it’s huge. We need now, more than ever, beauty in our lives. And plants can provide that. I love to see kids get out of the house and interact with plants. More and more, I think people are concerned about the disconnect that people have from nature and their surroundings . The garden can be an avenue through which we reconnect—even just digging around in the soil, or whatever the experience is. I love to see kids moving outdoors again, and adults, too, for that matter. In conversations about gardening these days, it seems like we’re moving from seeing it as a deeply personal...

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