About Montgomery Victory Gardens

Montgomery Victory Gardens is a non-profit initiative committed to building a more self-reliant and sustainable local food system in Montgomery County. As an integral part of the effort to build a local food system, MVG works with individual and community gardeners to bring the experience of growing and eating fresh, healthy local food to county residents, and has organized the first county-wide community gardening network among houses of worship to support local food pantries. MVG is also heading the effort to bring vegetable gardens to our county's public schools, and produces a weekly update with the best in local food news, events and policy developments.

Our Advisory Board

	Alexis Baden-Mayer is a lawyer who works in Washington, DC as the political director of the Organic Consumers Association. Alexis edits OCA's weekly e-newsletter Organic Bytes, which reaches 250,000 organic consumers each week, and runs OCA's campaigns against Monsanto, for strong organic standards, and to phase out the disposal of sewage sludge on farmland. Outside of her work for OCA, Alexis teaches ballet at Joy of Motion and is on the board of the Washington Peace Center.
	Susan Harris is a garden writer, blogger, Master Gardener and coach. She publishes Sustainable-Gardening and the Sustainable Gardening Blog, and is a regular contributor to GardenRant. She co-founded DC Urban Gardeners, Green the Grounds.org, and the Lawn Reform Coalition, and is past president of the Takoma Horticultural Club.
	Nichole "Niki" Lewis owns Green Earth Goods, a small market in Clarksburg Maryland that features many locally produced foods from small farms. She is a board member of the preservation coalition Montgomery Countryside Alliance, as well as the Sandy Spring-based growingSOUL. She is a dedicated organic grower of heirloom veggies at her 2 acre farm in Boyds.
	Erica Smith is a Master Gardener and the Coordinator Emeritus of the Grow It Eat It program for Montgomery County, as well as head of the vegetable realm of its Master Gardener Demonstration Garden and coordinator and frequent contributor to the Grow It Eat It blog. She is a 20+ year resident of Germantown where she shares half an acre with her husband and children, a polydactyl cat, and too many groundhogs.
	Tim Willard is a 20 year resident of Kensington and has been active in variety of green initiatives in Kensington and with the Montgomery County government. He is a founding member of Transition Takoma Park and active in the Maryland Green Party. He writes a blog on sustainability issues,"The Future is Green," for which he has actually received a small amount of money from LexisNexis.
	Woody Woodroof is the Executive Director of Red Wiggler Community Farm in Clarksburg, which he founded in 1996 as a result of his work with the developmentally disabled. Today Red Wiggler provides meaningful work and/or fresh food to 260 people with developmental disabilities, as well as running a summer youth program attended annually by 500 students, contributing fresh produce to area food banks and selling produce to more than 120 families through a CSA. Originally a freelance photographer, Woody continues to work with his fine art - now mostly produced in response to his work at Red Wiggler - which you can see here.
	Gordon Clark is the founder and Project Director of Montgomery Victory Gardens. A lifelong activist and organizer, Gordon served as the national Executive Director of Peace Action, the nation's largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization, from 1996 to 2001, followed by three years as the national Field Director for the Congress Watch division of Public Citizen, and then Project Coordinator for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network in 2007. He ran for Congress in 2008 to help bring attention to the issue of global warming. Gordon is a frequent public speaker and writer, including a regular column for Montgomery County's Voice newspaper. He grows vegetables feverishly in two community gardens, and lives in Silver Spring with his wife Emily and their two cats, Domino and Snoop.