One of Bill Maynard’s favorite mottos is M. Gandhi’s, ” To forget the soil is to forget ourselves.” Bill strives to ensure that his fellow citizens remember themselves and each other through public garden works. Bill helps those in low-income areas enjoy gardening as a way to beautify their urban landscape while supplementing their diet with the fresh produce grown. This year, Bill used his civil engineering skills to help design, plan, and plant a food-producing landscape initiative within an existing low-income housing project. The initiative introduced 80 citrus and fruit trees, as well as various herbs, into the existing project landscaping.
By working with the Parks and Recreation Commission, Bill ensured that future parks would include community gardens. He championed the idea that citywide recreation master plans for updating parks include community gardens just as they would softball fields, soccer fields, and horseshoe pits. Currently, Bill works on a committee to rewrite the city’s frontyard landscaping code. The goal is for future codes to allow for food-producing gardens of trees, shrubs, and flowers to beautify and help nourish hard-pressed neighborhoods.
Bill volunteers his time to assist the Sacramento City School District to encourage learning experiences through the creation of school gardens. He involves students from area high schools, giving them hands-on experience in designing and creating school gardens. Students have researched native plants, designed native plant areas, installed drip irrigation, and even painted murals as the backdrop for the gardens. Additionally, Bill helped the Hmong immigrant community relocate their gardens from toxic drainage sites to 4 specially designated community gardens. The Hmong community now has safe gardening areas on which the elders can teach their farming culture to future generations. Each winter and early spring, Bill’s green van serves as a mobile greenhouse, in which he sprouts and starts seeds to deliver to schools, community gardens, and attendees at various neighborhood meetings.
Bill raises a family and works full-time at a civil engineering office, designing subdivisions and streets. But his passion for helping others and his love for gardening have led him to use his skills not only to beautify urban areas, but also to create a stronger, more united sense of community. Bill lives by following Gandhi’s motto: “We must be the change that we wish to see in the world.”
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