Poppa & Momma Jones’ Historic Community Garden is a struggling garden with strong ties to an interesting past. Back around the summer of 2013, I walked past an elderly couple gathering vegetables from various garden beds. I had recently returned to the neighborhood and was exploring the community. Curious, I introduced myself and ergo, was […]
Haja: My name is Haja Worley. I am the husband of Cindy Nibbelink Worley. I’m from Patterson, New Jersey by way of North Carolina. Growing up, my parents had a garden in the backyard. I’m sure the garden was not as big as it seemed to be when I was little. We grew collard greens […]
My name is Lori Harris, and I’m a community gardener. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have been a gardener if it wasn’t for my father. I mean I like to grow plants in the house or whatever. But, I really took an interest in watching him be interested in doing this. He grew up in […]
In 2013, the Neighborhood Farm Initiative (NFI) received a generous grant from the DC Humanities Council to conduct oral histories with community gardeners in Washington, D.C. Founded in 2008, NFI is a community organization dedicated increasing access to healthy produce in the D.C. community, teaching urban residents how to grow their own food. The DC […]
Citizens Committee for New York City’s mission is simple: to help New Yorkers – especially those in low-income areas – come together and improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Residents are uniquely situated to define and act on the issues affecting their communities. When provided with modest support, neighborhood and school groups can […]
Before this year, I never thought I would grow my own food on a plot of land. When I was a teenager, my grandmother grew, and taught me to grow, vegetables in our backyard garden. She also canned tomatoes, peaches, apples and other fruits/vegetables, which kept us fed during the winter. She also gave away […]
Considered the oldest community garden in New York, Liz Christy Community Garden was established in 1973. In late 1973 and early 1974, the community activist group the Green Guerillas, among them an energetic member named Liz Christy, cleared the lot at the northeast corner of the Bowery and East Houston. In late April 1974, the […]
Omar B., a zone gardener with the New York Restoration Project (NYRP), shares entries from the journal he keeps about his work with the environmental non-profit founded by Bette Midler in 1995 to preserve and transform public green spaces in New York for all citizens to enjoy. His writing gives us a day-to-day peak inside […]
“The Hill” is a steep, woodland slope at the corner of Nelson Street and College Parkway in Rockville, Maryland. The Garden Club of College Gardens (GCCG) has landscaped and maintained a garden there since the 1970s. The Club is part of the National Capital Area Garden Clubs, Inc. and draws its approximately fifty-three members from […]
Brooklyn, New York, 1948. My immigrant father, Francesco Pietanza, a merchant steward and cook from Mola di Bari, Italy arrived at Ellis Island on the S.S. Coronado in search of his younger brother. Despite the racketeering longshore waterfront and the underlying discrimination that peppered the streets of his chance destination of South Brooklyn, he was […]
I was gardening in our community garden, located in Washington DC, just ten blocks from the Capitol Building, the home of the U.S. Congress. Our community garden is an oasis of peacefulness and my soul is refreshed when I garden there. On 9/11, after the planes hit the Trade Center’s twin towers in New York […]
Motivated by Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quote “you must be the change you wish to see in the world,” Trenton-based artist collective and non-profit organization S.A.G.E. Coalition (“Styles Advancing Graffiti’s Evolution”) transformed an abandoned lot next to their artist studio into a community garden. The most prominent artwork in the garden is its namesake, the mural […]
Note from the Artist and founder: “Before you read the story of the Please Touch Garden I would like to dedicate this story with a thank you to the many that helped make it possible. I did pour my heart into making the Please Touch Community Garden a reality, but it was truly the many […]
Sunflower Village, a community garden in the Franklin Square neighborhood of Baltimore, has been growing strong since 2010, when the Franklin Square Community Association decided to take over a large abandoned lot. Several years before, five houses stood where the Sunflower Village now resides. When they were torn down, all that remained was the neglected […]
I grew up gardening with my mother. She is an avid gardener with an encyclopedic knowledge of plants. One of my favorite childhood games to play with her was to point at plants and ask “what’s that?” More often than not, she would recite the common name and the scientific name as well as describe […]