A trip to Seattle for a community gardening conference

Last weekend I took my first few days off from my internship to attend the American Community Gardening Association’s annual conference, which this year was at the University of Washington in Seattle.  The ACGA is an organization (headquarted in Columbus, Ohio) that supports and provides resources for the community gardening movement throughout the nation.  What’s really neat is that it focuses heavily on building healthy communities and providing garden-fresh produce for everyone, not just those that can afford it.  Once again, I was reminded that gardening is so much more about people than it is about plants.

At the conference I attended sessions led by organizations that are working to improve community food security through a variety of programs.  Here are some of the organizations that I learned more about. 

In the Seattle area:

• The Muckleshoot Food Sovereignty Project works is founded on the principle that each native community has a right to definite its own food system and de-colonize its diet.  The project provides a cooking & advocacy training program for Muckleshoot chefs, an Honoring the Gift of Food class at NW Indian College, and has installed native plant gardens in schools.
• Lettuce Link, a program of Solid Ground, works with local gardens and orchards in the Seattle area to deliver fresh food to the food bank and other community programs.  As another Solid Ground project, Marra Farm on the west side of Seattle houses a Lettuce Link patch, a children's garden, and a P-Patch community garden.  They are able to donate 22,000 pounds of food each year from 4.5 acres and in addition local immigrant communities are able to grow food for themselves.  This property has been farmland since the 19th century and is one of Seattle’s two remaining historical farms.
• Good Cheer Food Bank on Whidbey Island has an on-site garden that provides fresh food throughout the summer to food bank clients.  During the off-season, the food bank partners with local farms so that food bank clients have access to fresh, local, organic produce all year long in its Fresh Food on the Table program.  They also host cooking and gardening classes.
• South Seattle’s South Park Fresh Starts distributes plant starts at the food bank- a win-win where the food bank provides another outlet for fresh produce and the client can grow food for themselves and for their neighbors.  The program has also begun helping community members start community gardens that focus on being creative with used materials and vacant space.

food bank lettuce at a community garden in Seattle

Outside of Seattle:

• Randall’s Island Park Alliance’s urban farm is an educational, non-profit, one acre farm located between Harlem, the South Bronx, and Queens in New York City.  They teach children and adults about fruits, vegetables, chickens, and rice cultivation and consumption.
• The Sustainable Food Center in Austin, Texas has developed an integrated approach to creating a healthy food system.  The program has community focal sites (usually schools) where community members get together to create a Wellness Team that can help implement a variety of programs.  These programs include the Happy Kitchen/Cocina Alegre cooking class, farm-to-school cafeterias, and giveaways of seeds and compost.  The organization also operates four farmers markets in Austin that provide a $20 match program for SNAP and WIC.
• The Oregon Food Bank offers the Seed to Supper gardening course, a place for adults to learn basic gardening skills for free.  The class is taught by volunteers, and is one of OFB’s attempts to move beyond emergency food to more sustainable solutions.

OFB's Seed-to-Supper course guide

Seattle is an excellent place to host a conference about community gardening.  The city’s Department of Neighborhoods has supported community gardening for decades with its P-Patch program.  P-Patches are community gardens that exist throughout the city and are open to anyone, but especially focus on providing a gardening space for resource-limited communities like immigrants, elderly, and low-income folks.  In these plots gardeners can grow food for themselves and actively donate food to the food bank through programs like Lettuce Link.  To date, there are almost 90 P-Patches in the city that vary in size and age, totaling around 3000 individual plots.  In addition, there are a wide variety of other urban agriculture projects in the city such as food forests and orchards, market farms, therapy gardens, and educational gardens.

As part of the conference I also got to tour some of Seattle’s historic community gardens.  Picardo Farm P-Patch was the city’s first P-Patch, and today houses over 300 plots on 2.3 acres.  They also have a children’s garden, food bank garden, mushrooms, bamboo, and bees.  Interbay and Eastlake are equally booming P-Patches in other parts of the city.  

Picardo Farm P-Patch gardens

Picardo's tool shed

Eastlake's terraced garden plots

I also visited Danny Woo in the International District- not a P-Patch but still a community garden, coordinated by a local CDA.  Danny Woo has nearly 100 plots on 1.5 acres for elderly community members who live in affordable housing, most of which are immigrants from Asia.

One gardener shows us her plot at Danny Woo Community Garden

chickens at Danny Woo

As you might see from the long list of organizations, projects, and gardens, I got to learn about and see an extensive number of community-based projects that are working on improving local food systems.  I was energized by the work to build just communities in urban settings and I see myself fitting in somewhere in this type of work.  Next year, the ACGA conference will be in Chicago, another city full of awesome community gardens.  Maybe I’ll make it out there for a visit.