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COMMUNITY GARDENS GROW HOPE FOR TRIAD
By Michelle Alfini and Jordan Spritzer
Confidently stepping through the wooden archway, Donna Poe walks through rows and rows of green. Her eyes light up with pride as she describes the kale, asparagus, eggplant, carrots and potatoes that line the pathways but these vegetables aren’t just hers. They belong to the entire community.
Twenty minutes south of Graham, the Garden of Concord in Eli Whitney North Carolina began in May of 2009. It’s mission: to grow organic fruits and vegetables and establish a greater desire for healthy living in the community.
The Garden of Concord is just one of many community gardens that are growing across the country. Community gardening has been around since the early 18th century but recently they have begun to take root in many major cities as public health projects.
The theory behind the gardens is that, by allowing those with the greatest need to grow their own fresh, healthy, foods, the gardens can not only increase access to these foods but also incentivize healthy eating.
There are many different models of community gardens but one of the most common forms is one in which workers hold community ownership of the land, work that land for a set number of hours and share in the harvest. Each member shares both financial and physical responsibility for the garden.
The Garden of Concord at Concord Methodist Church has been called one of the best community gardens in Alamance County and according to Poe, the garden's coordinator, that’s because of its emphasis the "community."
“Our mission statement basically is to empower those in need in our communities [with] good food," she said. "It's open to the whole community — it’s not just the church — so anyone’s welcome to come and join the garden."
Donating food box by box
Poe said there’s value in teaching community members about the food grown in the garden, as well as the best ways to cook and eat the food. The focal point of this mission is the "box of blessings" program.
Anyone can pay $25 a week for the garden's community supported agriculture (CSA), where patrons receive a package of freshly grown fruits and vegetables from that week. But the garden also donates CSA's to community members with suffering from food insecurity. The Garden of Concord reported donating over 2,000 pounds of food to the food pantry Southern Alamance Family Empowerment (SAFE) in 2014
- Donna Poe, garden coordinator of the Garden of Concord
"We actually have folks pay for those boxes," Poe said. "We have other sponsors like Garden Angels pay for those boxes and then they’re given to these families."
Families who attend SAFE are eligible for free garden membership. Poe said the garden uses programs such as SAFE and the backpack ministry program to identify families in need of fresh produce.
The backpack ministry is a program run by the Alamance-Burlington School System (ABSS), which provides students coming from food insecure homes backpacks to take home on weekends full of easily prepare-able foods.
Though, Poe said the garden's program proves to be most useful in the summer when school is not in session and there's no backpack being sent home each Friday.
“School’s not open over the summer. So we just wanted to be able to help those kids and not only with just like processed foods but with good healthy vegetables," Poe said.
Starting large
Poe began attending the Concord Methodist Church seven years ago and took it upon herself to begin the community garden soon after. Without any prior knowledge of gardening and growing foods, Poe attended Central Carolina Community College in Pittsboro where she received her associate’s degree in sustainable agriculture.
Poe said she is always reaching out to contacts she’s met along the way, as well as continuing her own education
“I Google a lot. I Google all day long and usually repeat Googling things because I just want to make sure that I’m doing it right,” she said.
The garden began with 16 beds of produce and a handful of volunteers. Now, more than 50 families are involved. Poe uses the “lasagna gardening” technique for the garden’s soil. The method gets its name because it requires gardeners to alternate between levels of “brown” and “green” types of composts.
“It’s not about being these professional farmers and having these picture-perfect produce for harvesting,” Poe said. “It’s about just the working together.”
Starting from within
Not all community gardens are as successful as Poe’s, however.
- Beth Warner, associate professor of human service studies
Beth Warner, professor of human service studies at Elon University, said the community gardens that survive are the ones that are supported by the community members. She said people will often come into a community with the good intention of fixing problems, such as food insecurity. Though, ultimately they don’t succeed because the community members aren’t as invested in problem solving as the outside support.
“If people in the communities have these kind of ideas and have these desires to do things, then I think our role is to help facilitate them in doing that,” Warner said.
Warner and some former students started a community garden just over three years ago in Burlington’s North Park, a local community center. The garden was given a $3,000 grant by the city as a part of a greater plan to improve the area surrounding the park.
Though as the Warner and her students began separating themselves from the garden after a year, the few community members who remained involved weren’t able to keep it going.
“It needed a manager, it needed someone to coordinate and keep things going,” she said.
Warner plans to get the garden going again with new students as a part of a research project examining factors that make community gardens successful. She said with Alamance County’s long history as a rural area, there’s a lot of untapped potential for community gardening.
“So much was accomplished over [at North Park] and they just need some resources to hire some people to continue the work that’s going on,” Warner said.
Growing your community garden
- Mark Danieley, county extension director and county horticulture agent for Alamance County
Mark Danieley, county extension director and county horticulture agent for Alamance County, agrees that the community aspect of community gardens is essential for a garden to survive and truly have an impact.
“There’s the model where everybody works together in one big garden, and they share the produce and that’s really the better of the community garden models,” Danieley said. “It seems to be more effective than the one where individuals tend their own plot. If everybody works together, there is a better sense of community and they tend to be more successful.”
As Concord’s garden project was looking to get off the ground, Danieley helped it take root, and according to Poe, he continues to be a resource for the garden.
Meanwhile, Danieley said it’s the Garden of Concord that can serve as a model for other communities looking for ways to increase access to fresh and healthy foods.
“That’s probably the best one we have in Alamance County,” he said.
As for spreading the word about how to grow a community garden Poe said she has already started reaching out and speaking to other groups looking for a way to start.
“I’ve done several presentations to other churches and organizations because I was so excited to learn from another garden and I want to share that passion,” she said.