Gardens for Great, Green Communities
by Julia Prange
Published: December 12, 2011
Urban gardens are an excellent example of a neighborhood project that has the potential to impact many different aspects of community well-being. Certainly the sites provide environmental and health benefits, but with programmatic intention, an urban garden can also support economic development, youth programming, public safety and more. This article from the LISC Green Development Center outlines the opportunities that urban gardening offers, with a special focus on examples of job-training and employment programs.
As communities implement programs that will make them stronger, more sustainable places to live, urban gardens have emerged as increasingly common features of a neighborhood. In under-used parking lots, on apartment building rooftops, in corners of pocket parks and on entire vacant properties, these fertile swathes of green space are bringing much more than fresh produce to both the residents who use them and the municipalities that have welcomed their existence.
Urban agriculture has become increasingly prominent as the national food movement has raised awareness about the deficits of the conventional food system and its sometimes damaging implications for human health, environmental quality and local economies. Urban gardens—also referred to as urban farms when they become large in scale—can reclaim formerly vacant lots for sowing, raising and harvesting fresh fruits and vegetables and are underpinning a much larger movement towards securing local access to affordable nutrition.
Although green community development has not always been specifically integrated with community development, many organizations have embraced the connection between environmental and community development goals. The LISC Green Development Center, which provides funding, education and technical assistance to make environmental sustainability inseparable from economic sustainability, has become particularly interested in the development of urban gardens and the programming that makes them successful. In a recent round of grant making for green construction and planning projects by the Green Development Center, nearly two thirds of applications contained an urban garden or another project to meet the desire of the local community to have access to healthy, fresh foods and green space.
Community gardening simultaneously meets a range of community development goals. Urban gardens can be incubators for local business development, workshops for green jobs, labs for youth engagement, and campuses for environmental education and community re-entry. In addition, because these gardens are safe, beautiful outdoor spaces, they also become places where residents of the neighborhood can meet and interact while caring for the gardens and building a sense of community. Some of the most commonly known benefits of urban gardens include:
- Neighborhood beautification
- Connecting urban dwellers back to the land and nature
- Providing wholesome, nutritious and economical food
- Reduction of crime and blight
- Creation and use of green space
Food issues have increasingly become an integral part of the strategy that local LISC offices around the country carry out in their Building Sustainable Communities work, staying true to a comprehensive community development approach. What follows are examples from various LISC offices and their community partners:
In San Diego, for example, the New Roots Community Farm—a 2.3-acre parcel in the heart of Mid-City—provides growing space for more than eighty refugees, new immigrants and neighbors seeking access to fresh, culturally appropriate food. The New Roots Community Farm also offers its growers business development assistance through The Refugee Entrepreneurial Agriculture Program (REAP), a project of the International Rescue Committee –San Diego, to tap into the local and organic food market. The program is a good example of how, with the right programming and partnerships, urban gardens also offer opportunity to achieve economic development, employment and sustainability goals.
Adding to San Diego’s active community garden scene, the Crawford High School Youth Garden hires 10 to 12 youth interns each semester who learn to seed, harvest, cook, market and eat the food they produce on campus. These youth then act as ambassadors of food justice and healthy eating throughout their communities.
The Seeds of Success program in Duluth, administered by Community Action Duluth (CAD), revitalizes neighborhoods through urban agriculture on 12 sites throughout the city and provides jobs for low-income adults and youth who grow, process and distribute food from the plots. This summer, Seeds offered transitional employment to 13 individuals, five of whom found full-time employment or educational opportunities within months of their experience with Seeds. CAD’s Green Jobs Initiative won the 2011 Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Innovation Award.
In Toledo, a 2004 LISC partnership with the Toledo Botanical Gardens has led to the creation of more than 100 community gardens, many of which were developed through Community Integration for Training and Employment (CITE), a program of the Lucas County Juvenile Justice Division. In 2009, this partnership provided paid employment in the gardens to more than 100 adjudicated youth, who learned new skills, connected with positive mentors and provided valuable services to their neighborhoods. As a result of the program’s popularity, a local community college transformed its landscaping program by focusing on urban agriculture and is planning to incorporate a training center and kitchen into their greenhouse to teach entrepreneurial and growing skills to youth from the CITE program.
In Buffalo, the Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) operates Growing Green, an urban agricultural training program that provides leadership skills and meaningful employment to local youth, who tend the farm and sell fresh produce and other organic food products. The program began in 2003 on an urban farm, teaching youth to grow food organically, and since then has developed other program components, including “Be Vocal Eat Local Week,” with activities and events in celebration of local food, and “Eat-Up,” an annual youth conference on food issues. MAP’s expanded and award-winning urban farm is home to Buffalo’s first straw bale greenhouse, which includes a closed-loop aquaponic system to grow fish in addition to the farm’s produce crops.
A newly constructed community kitchen and farmer’s market are being added to a community garden on the grounds of a former Parish Hall in Cincinnati. Produce from the garden and planned hoop houses for year-round growing will allow the ministry to serve fresh, healthy lunches throughout the week and provide new job opportunities for farmers looking to sell at the new market.
Urban gardens provide more than just access to fresh food in communities that have few healthy options. They beautify a neighborhood’s physical landscape, act as natural filters and control for stormwater, are places for community convening and engagement, and provide for economic development opportunities. From job training to youth engagement, urban gardens have presented a particularly ripe opportunity for community development practitioners to expand the scope of their work and accomplish the holistic goals of comprehensive green community development; sometimes literally in their own backyards.
Julia Prange is an assistant program officer at the LISC Green Development Center. She manages communications for the GDC and coordinates an affinity group to support LISC staff interested in and working on food systems related projects. Prior to working at LISC, Prange worked in both the public and private sectors as a planner and community organizer.
Posted in Journal Volume 2, Number 2 -- December, 2011