Starting over is never easy, but after Hurricane Katrina forced Tina Perrin to relocate from the Gentilly section of New Orleans to Atlanta, she hoped to make a smooth transition. Perrin had emotional baggage as a displaced person, but she would soon learn her adopted community of Pittsburgh had baggage as well: it was a food desert: an area of America with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, according to the Agriculture department.
In New Orleans, Perrin kept a garden year round. So she began planting -- cucumbers, tomatoes, and even a failed attempt at eggplant -- on her balcony. When she heard the Pittsburgh Community Improvement Association (PCIA) was planning a community garden, she claimed one of the 24 plots. The Welch Street Community Garden opened last year, providing Perrin with enough lettuce to last through December, pole beans for the taking, and three varieties of her beloved eggplant.
"I love eggplant, but it is expensive," said Perrin, 72, who works part-time as PCIA's office coordinator. "This summer, I have a lot of it and I have learned a lot of dishes to use it."
Nationwide, stories like Perrin's are becoming more common gaining in frequency as urban farming and community gardens have hit an up cycle. More than 150 such gardens are active in the Atlanta metro area, having spread dramatically over the past five years. While enthusiasm and support for urban gardening has waxed and waned since the 1890s, local enthusiasts see this particular upswing as something more permanent, a return to the way things used to be when communities were built around food.
As early as the 1900s, urban gardens were created to cultivate vacant lots and educate schoolchildren, or as civic improvement projects, according to Laura Lawson, author of "City Bountiful: A City of Community Gardening in America" (University of California Press, $27). During times of economic distress and social change, urban gardening has boomed as a method to feed the masses, employ the idle and address a host of social issues. In some ways, not much has changed.
Last year, A.D. Williams Park Community Garden in Carey Park opened next to the Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership Academy. Students use the garden for hands-on lessons in biology, physical science and the environment. The three-year-old Collier Heights Park Community Garden was created to help build inter-generational relationships. And the new garden at Atlanta Mission Urban Garden in downtown Atlanta provides vocational training and therapy for men in recovery.
Welch Street Community Garden was built on an abandoned patch of land owned by the city of Atlanta after a community survey indicated the need for fresh fruits and vegetables, said Pierre Gaither, operations manager of PCIA. Stores in the area offered little or no fresh produce because it didn't sell. Residents didn't buy the limited produce because the quality was poor. A garden, they decided, would break the cycle.
Thirteen gardeners now occupy half of the plots in the year-old-garden, which has supplied residents with everything from watermelon to tomatoes to broccoli. "All you have to do is invest your time," said Gaither. "It helps eliminate the excuse that people have about eating healthy."
The need for healthier eating is one of the factors experts believe will help sustain the current interest in urban farming. America's obesity epidemic and its attending health problems have been in the spotlight for several years with an assist from first lady Michelle Obama, who recently released her first book about creating and harvesting the three-year-old White House garden.
Will Allen, CEO and founder of Milwaukee-based Growing Power who helped the first lady launch her "Let's Move" initiative, said her high-profile campaign has helped many people, and minorities in particular, see the value in gardening. Allen left corporate America in the early 1990s to farm and sell fruits and vegetables. Now he trains urban farmers and helps create community-based food systems nationwide. The new food revolution, he said, will be fueled by young people in occupations ranging from farmers and chefs to city planners and experts in renewable energy.
Some local gardens are already invested in that kind of vocational training. At Atlanta Mission, 100 men cycle through a personal development program that includes planting and harvesting the tomatoes, peppers, turnips, herbs and more in the year-old, pinwheel shaped garden. They also work in the kitchen where they learn how to prepare the food they have grown and attend tutorials from industry heavyweights such as Whole Foods.
After several decades in the business, Rashid Nuri, founder of Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture, has witnessed the many peaks and valleys of interest in urban farming, but with five sites in the metro area, 40 acres under cultivation and 35 employees on the payroll, he is evidence that it can be a sustainable practice. "You go around the world and everyone else in the world grows food in cities and they always have," Nuri said. "What we are creating now is a local food economy: farmers markets, urban growers and people growing in their own backyards."
About the Author
