Metro-Atlanta is home to over 150 community gardens on public and private land. People from all over the city come together to grow fresh, healthy vegetables. In the process, they demonstrate that the local food movement is also about growing it yourself, in the company of neighbors.

The following four examples show how gardens strengthen the surrounding community by providing hands-on garden education, working with diverse cultures, turning an eyesore into an oasis, and using public land to enrich a community. To find examples of each, I went straight to the source: Fred Conrad, the Community Garden Coordinator of Atlanta Community Food Bank who works daily to support community gardens across metro-Atlanta.

When asked what he thinks draws people to community gardens, Fred answered, “People want to be connected to the life-giving part of a garden, want to know how to grow food, and to participate in the whole process from start to finish.”

EVERYDAY LEARNING IN THE GARDEN
Located in Decatur, the Oakhurst Community Garden Project (OCGP; www.oakhurstgarden.org) has deep roots when it comes to education. In 1997, Sally Wylde founded the Oakhurst Garden to create a place for neighbors to have community vegetable plots and to also offer a place for local youth to plant seeds, nurture the plants, and harvest for a delicious meal. These tenets still create the backbone for the twelve programs the Garden runs per year, in addition to the Garden’s evening classes that cover topics from creating healthy soups to raising your own urban chicken flock. The OCGP supports 27 community plots, including four raised, handicap-accessible beds. What can community gardens teach? Plot-holder Marti Fessenden joined mainly “to teach my daughter that fresh food comes from the Earth and not the grocery store.” As a result, daughter Sydney’s favorite vegetable is Swiss chard, the first vegetable she harvested and then prepared at home.

ROOTING DOWN IN THE GARDEN
Originally from Bosnia Herzegovina, Slobodanka Besic immigrated with her family to Atlanta nine years ago. In her country, every house has a small garden where fresh vegetables are grown and harvested for the family table. As one of the founding members of the Clarkston Community Garden (www.clarkstoncommunitycenter.org) five years ago, she sought a garden to grow healthy, organic vegetables, but also a place to connect to a piece of life she left behind. The Clarkston Community Garden has offered this connection to the home country for many immigrants coming from Vietnam, Somalia and Bhutan and for local residents as well. The group kicks off each growing season with informational classes, covering topics like watering tips and “what to grow when.” They also plan regular potlucks with recipes from all over the world.

NO MORE MIDNIGHT DUMPING
Located in southwest Atlanta, the Ashview Community Garden was once a popular site for midnight dumping: refrigerators, sheetrock, shingles, and anything else the local contractor didn’t want to pay fees to dump. Under the direction of the neighborhood association’s president, Robert Abbensett, the community cleaned up the site over and over again, only to find it dumped on once more. A bit of research turned up the land’s owner, CSX, and with the help of the City of Atlanta and a personal commitment from then-Mayor Bill Campbell, the city cleared off the remaining debris along with the top inches of soil and brought in the new dirt that started the Ashview Community Garden. Today, the garden supports over 30 gardeners, most of them senior citizens, who are committed to growing their food organically.

THE NEW GENERATION
“In search of the organic tomato” is how Fred Conrad describes this enthusiastic group of neighbors from Cabbagetown and Reynoldstown who wanted to grow their own food in a community setting. In the fall of 2005, eight dedicated neighbors started meeting monthly with one goal in mind: to create a new community garden that would unite both the old and new neighbors of Reynoldstown together in a common greenspace. The first R-Town Community Garden (www.rtowngarden.org.) was located on a privately owned piece of land that the organizers knew would one day be developed. Now, the garden has a new home at the Lane Carson Center. The new location also connects the garden to the children and seniors that regularly use the center for other programming, delivering the promised unification of which the garden’s founders dreamed.

In all their forms, community gardens are a great way to bring people together over the common ground of really local and really good food. Recognizing the many positive benefits these gardens deliver, in 2007, the City of Atlanta signed off on an adopter agreement that allows neighborhoods to “adopt” a portion of their nearby city park for the creation of new community gardens. Administered by Park Pride, the new arrangement promises to increase access to local community gardens throughout the city.

Stephanie Van Parys lives in Decatur with her husband, Rob, children Oscar, Eleanor and Benjamin, their two dogs and chickens. She gardens anytime she can in their city garden, and shares her knowledge and enthusiasm for organics and gardening in many ways. Stephanie earned her degree in horticulture from UGA and serves as the executive director for the Oakhurst Community Garden Project in Decatur.

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