This being peak tomato season, our thoughts turn to gardening — community gardening in particular.
As it turns out, the Atlanta Community Food Bank — the nonprofit that distributed nearly 34 million pounds of food and other grocery items last year to food pantries, night shelters and elsewhere — is a major player in Atlanta’s community garden movement.
Since 1997, the food bank has helped more than 150 community gardens in the metro area, from those in senior high rises to housing projects to residential group homes. In return, some of the gardens contribute to the nonprofit’s “Plant a Row for the Hungry” campaign, which harvested close to 100,000 pounds of fresh produce last year.
More importantly, the food bank wants to head off people from needing its services. “Our whole goal is to empower people with information and tools so they can feed themselves,” says Bill Bolling, the Food Bank’s founder and executive director.
Q: What makes a garden a community garden?
A: Different, diverse people will have a piece of it. It actually requires that people work together. People who like to grow food are really great people. They like to help each other.
Q: Do the gardens come in all shapes and sizes?
A: There are large ones; there are small ones. Sometimes, there are just a few people to begin with and then the garden grows. We've even had congregations that, after reflecting, decide to do a garden. Most of those do donate their food to us.
Q: You feed the hungry. How does building community gardens help do that?
A: During the summer months, the time of greatest demand for the food bank because school is out, we get tens of thousands of pounds of fresh garden food. We do represent thousands and thousands of people who are hungry. Over the long run, this might be a way for them to cut their food budget.
Q: How do you help people with their community gardens?
A: We can build it. If it takes bringing in lumber or equipment or teaching about soil and compost, we know how to do all that. We just don't do it for people; we do it with people. At the end of the day, it is not our garden. It is their garden.
Q. Are most of gardens intergenerational?
A: Yes. Kids often end up in the garden. We've got gardens where we've built playgrounds. A garden is a great educational tool. A lot of kids don't even know where food comes from. They actually think it comes from the grocery store.
Q: Without these community gardens, would you have a hard time getting fresh produce?
A: Probably not, given that we have been around for 32 years. Increasingly, we are looking not only at hunger, but also the related issue of obesity, which is really related to eating too much of the wrong food. At the food bank, we have a relationship with hard-to-reach people. Therefore, we can be educators.
Q: Can you talk about the community garden movement?
A: If we look out 10, 15 or 20 years, food is going to be even more expensive, given rising energy costs. Both community gardening and urban gardening is a very good sign for all of us. With a lot of land betwixt and between, with people going bankrupt and so forth, this is a great opportunity to bank some of that land for future growing.
Q: Are you a gardener?
A: I am on and off. We have a garden for our employees here at the food bank. A lot of them are out there after work working in the garden. It is really neat.
Q: Can you help everyone become a green thumb?
A: Some people have a greener thumb than others, that’s for sure. That is the real beauty of gardening with other people. Inevitably, the person with the plot next to you, they know what they are doing.
The Sunday conversation is edited for length and clarity. Writer Ann Hardie can be reached by e-mail at ann.hardie@ymail.com.
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