growing green communities

Community gardens can turn urban blight into productive patches of green

Story & Photos By Natalie Walston 

Sugar snap peas fresh from the garden are juicy and sweet. But many kids would rather reach into a Doritos bag for a snack rather than pick something green from the ground.

“There are five corner stores around here, but none of them carry fresh produce,” said Christopher Appel, who is a trained social worker and co-founder of Four Seasons City Farm, a network of urban gardens in Columbus.

Appel and members of the Old Presbyterian Church took a plot of land in one of Columbus’ roughest east side neighborhoods and cleared out the beer bottles and other debris. They began growing strawberries, sunflowers, snap peas, beets, onions, peppers, cabbage, collards, chards, lettuce, spinach, figs and even kiwis.

Eventually, their desire to turn city blocks green spread to 14 urban gardens.

“We work with neighborhood kids who help us out,” said Jonathan Meier, who joined Appel to work in the gardens two years ago.

He explained that one-third of the food grown in the gardens goes to anyone who helps pull weeds and water and tend the plants. The rest of what’s grown is given to food banks, soup kitchens, churches and neighbors. City Farm also sells its produce on a regular basis to a community farmer’s market and farm stands at other locations.

City Farm was started with help from the Growing to Green program, one of the largest organized community garden efforts in Columbus, said coordinator Bill Dawson of the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Garden.

“It’s an opportunity for youth to learn entrepreneurial and business practices such as marketing skills, math and finance,” Dawson said. “In the past we had a group of fourth graders draw up a business plan to grow and sell basil to Cameron Mitchell restaurants.”

Dawson said Growing to Green assists in garden design, offers assistance to schools with gardens as learning centers and acts as a resource guide for gardeners.

“The program also offers a series of training courses for community gardeners and grant money,” he said. The Scotts Company and the Columbus Foundation Neighborhood Partnership Program provide funding for the grants.

“We’ve found that many times home-owners will start renovating houses after a garden is put in,” Dawson said, “creating redevelopment in neighborhoods and cutting crime rates.”

There are more than 80 community gardens operated by the conservatory. Central Ohio food programs receive more than 2,500 pounds of fresh produce each year.

Bringing gardens to people in northwest Ohio

Downtown Toledo has large swaths of abandoned lots and other open urban spaces as the urban population has declined over the years, according to Michael Szuberla, manager of the Toledo GROWs program, an outreach program of the Toledo Botanical Garden. Filling in the gaps in barren downtown lots with lush gardens is one mission for Toledo GROWs.

“Sometimes we’re dealing with fill dirt when a house is demolished. You can’t even call it soil,” Szuberla said. The program helps not only with soil improvement but provides information and resources, seeds and plants free of charge and long-term tool loans.

Toledo GROWs’ focus is on low-income residents, from children enrolled in Head Start to senior citizens living in public housing. It has 45 gardens in northwest Ohio in both rural and urban areas. Szuberla said the gardens help improve nutrition by providing access to fresh products.

“You wouldn’t expect kids to get excited by spinach and kale, but they do,” Szuberla said. “We’ve found that kids will eat anything that they’ve grown.”

And if that weren’t enough, there’s yet another benefit of community gardens – it’s a way to lower grocery bills. “You get all the fresh, local produce for five or six months out of the year for free,” Szuberla said.

While the Toledo GROWs program concentrates on low-income areas of the city, those areas are not its sole focus. Szuberla said anyone could start a community garden in any neighborhoods.

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