About Gardens for Humanity

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Board Members Wanted

Gardens for Humanity is looking for new board members to help guide our programs into the future. We are seeking people who share our goals and have diverse interests, backgrounds, skills, and talents. We meet on the third Friday of each month at 3:00. If you are interested in joining us, please email president@gardensforhumanity.org

Our Mission

Gardens for Humanity’s mission is to develop and share our relationships with Humanity and Nature through gardening, art, and education.

Our Vision

To accomplish our mission we strive to develop and assist home, school, and community gardens and to organize events that promote gardening, ecological education, food security, and artistic expression. We encourage our community to cultivate values, skills, and experiences needed to seek and regain balance with the natural world, to awaken and tend the gardens of the human spirit, and to create an ecologically sustainable and more humane culture.

To learn more about the inspiration behind Gardens for Humanity and the hopeful message for the movement that inspires us watch our movie:

Gardeners of the Spirit – Changing the World one Garden at a Time

“…helping each of us remember our connection with the Sun and Moon, the rain, the seasons, our fellow creatures, and the Earth itself.”

Board of Directors

Richard Sidy, M. Ed., President, has lived and gardened in Sedona since 1982. He is an educator, writer and community activist. Richard served in the Peace Corps in rural community development from 1969 – 1971 in the West African nation of the Ivory Coast. Upon returning from the Peace Corps he worked for the Los Angeles City Volunteer Corps establishing community gardens and food co-ops. Richard is a retired teacher of over 35 years, and advocates sustainable education through writing and building community collaboration around the issues of food security, sustainable economic development, and environmental education.

Radhika Jen Marie Warr, Vice President is an experimental gardener, Ayurvedic and live foods chef, and owner of ChocolaTree Restaurant in Sedona. Radhika has grown a family orchard/garden, started and nurtured a vibrant Eatery and marketplace, and developed a line of live foods distributed online and throughout the country. Her contributions to this world have been recognized by many as a result of her groundbreaking restaurant, and service to the causes of environmental and spiritual regeneration.

Karen O’Donnell, Treasurer, is a native Arizonan who grew up in the Phoenix area. She earned her living as a commercial insurance agent and still works several days a week. Her gardening experience was very limited in the Phoenix area where, by the end of May, it gets too hot to maintain a garden. Moving to Sedona in 2013 allowed her to actually find out what a full garden should be, and encouraged her to become a Master Gardener. She was an active part of the Greening Harmony program from 2014 and served on the steering committee. This taught her about the Sedona climate and it’s soil needs and now successfully gardens with her husband Robert. Karen is also developing her talents and skills as an artist and has shown her work at invitational shows at the Sedona Arts Center.

Sarah Estrada, Secretary is a graduate of Purdue Univeristy with a bachelor’s in Natural Resources and Environmental Science, with a minor in Cultural Anthropology. She has worked as a crew leader for a local youth corps and led children in various service projects in Colorado and in Prescott, AZ with AmeriCorps. Currently she is the Sustainability Coordinator for the City of Sedona. Teaching youth corps members set the stage for her excitement in educating people on how to give back to their communities through service and gardening. She learned that gardening has the capacity to heal the wounds of the past and ground people for the future.

Janice Montgomery is a master gardener who has been instrumental in developing community gardens for forty years in Arizona. She is one of the founders of the Scottsdale Community Garden started in 1976, the St. Mary’s Food Bank garden, and numerous school gardens. Currently she is the founder and leader of the Verde Thumbs Garden Club, which serves the communities in the Verde Valley with garden education, mentorship, and is the co-founder of the Verde Valley Seed Library. Janice is an accomplished garden educator.

Rose Marie Licher, Board Member Emeritus, is a Sedona resident since 1983, and a founding board member of Gardens for Humanity.  Though raised in the city (Wichita, Kansas), summers on her grandparents farm helped her appreciate farming and the natural world. She earned a B.S. from Oklahoma University and her Master’s from MIT. She is also active in the Verde Valley Gem and Mineral Club and tends her garden which is an example of diverse home-scale permaculture and food production. With the help of the Amelia Earhart Fellowship in 1951, Rose Marie attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she joined the glider club and “learned to fly like the birds.” Rose Marie was a pioneer of women in the field of aeronautical engineering, and flying, and had a life-long career with the McDonald Douglas aircraft company.

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