Support The Woodland Realm's FenceRaiser

Ryan Francois is organizing this fundraiser.

Donation protected

The Woodland Realm is a volunteer-led, 1/2 acre urban garden and woodland in Des Moines, IA. Since 2020, we've been growing food and building community in Woodland Heights through skill shares and events.

From the beginning, we aspired to create a whimsical, fairytale garden where neighbors could connect with nature and each other. At the start of the COVID19 pandemic, we began transforming a vacant urban lot. We planted fruit trees, built raised beds and picnic tables, established edible perennials and pollinator plantings, blazed trails through our mini woodland, and sculpted a pizza oven out of natural materials.

Over the past three years, our garden has become an inclusive "third space" for the neighborhood to gather. We've welcomed the public and shared the garden's bounty through potluck dinners, pop-up markets, workshops, and free community events. The Woodland Realm has offered a natural respite in the heart of the city, an informal outdoor space where folks can learn together and address climate change at a grassroots level.

In October 2023, the city shut down our public events for at least one year. They required that we build a permanent storage shed, signage, and expensive wood fence all the way around our plot, in order to comply with their new zoning code.

We've already built a beautiful garden shed, primarily out of quality reclaimed materials, and a privacy fence along the back of our little woodland. We're also negotiating with the city to purchase several feet of unused right-of-way, which is extra wide in this area, in order to keep about 25% of our plantings.

We plan to install a traditional post-and-rail style fence with limestone pillars and matching, handcrafted gates. All of the timber is sustainably harvested Black Locust from a local farm. Since we have to build it, we want it to be an intentional, beautiful, and long-lasting addition to our urban garden.

Please support us with our FenceRaiser so we can purchase the right-of-way, build the fence, install signage, and work with the city on conditional approvals that will allow us to reopen for public events in 2025.

For more on the story, check out:

How you can support

1. Give us a follow on Instagram

2. For a limited time, you can purchase the Woodland Realm shirts below from Raygun, and a portion of the sales will go to support our project!

3. If buying new isn't your thing, we're hosting a FenceRaising party at Raygun from 1-4p on Sat, Sept 21st. Anyone who donates $50+ to the project, either online or in-person, can bring one item of your choice to print yourself with one of the designs. We'll also have some thrifted and naturally-dyed shirts available for purchase.

4. For those who donate online before Friday, Sept 20th, the following giveaways will be available for pickup at the party:

$25+ : Woodland Realm sticker designed by local artists
$50+ : print your own Woodland Realm item, plus sticker
$100+ : one pint of local apple cider syrup from Front Yard Sugar, plus print and sticker (limit 40)
$150+ : add one pound of our honey, plus everything above (limit 30)
$350+ : one handmade 6" cake and one jar of granola from Oak Park, featuring fresh flowers, apples, and honey from the Woodland Realm, plus 2 prints and stickers (limit 20)
$1000+ : all of the above, plus we'll plant one apple tree next spring, either in your yard or at a community garden of your choice*
$6000+ : all of the above, plus naming rights to our first shed (pictured) and a custom plaque by the door (limit 1)*

*If you're interested in making a tax deductible donation over $1000, please reach out directly and we'll arrange it through one of our neighborhood non-profits.

Thank you for supporting the Woodland Realm urban garden, a little slice of the Shire in the heart of Des Moines.