City FarmIf you walk down the paved, car-lined streets behind Women & Infants Hospital, through the densely populated inner-city neighborhoods of South Providence, the last thing you would expect to find are lush gardens brimming with flowers, honey bees, insects, birds and food. Lots of food. These gardens used to be neglected lots overgrown with weeds, littered with broken glass, tires and debris, and their soils polluted with heavy metals like lead. They were hot spots for crime and drug activity. Parents wouldn't want to go there, let alone have that be the space where their children played.
Over the past 25 years, these degraded vacant lots have been transformed into what are now beautiful and thriving gardens used for food production. By restoring the health of the land through clearing debris and remediating the soil of its toxins, the community is restored as well. This includes not only the community of people of different ages, ethnicities and income brackets, but also the community of soil creatures and insects, butterflies, migrating birds and animals that are essential to a healthy environment. This diversity and bio-diversity is at the heart of Providence's many gardens.
For those of us who lived off of the food grown by our own hands or that of our parents or grandparents in the Depression Era Gardens and World War II Victory Gardens, we understand the importance of land in providing sustenance and survival. Food grown at home kept entire families fed during food and fuel shortages caused by war, economic decline, and natural disasters. And despite of the New England climate, food was grown, harvested, canned, frozen and preserved to last all year round. AND IT STILL IS!! But in the inner-city of Providence, finding land to have a garden is not easy. This is where the role of land trusts becomes critically important.
In 1981, a group of individuals began a food garden on an abandoned lot that had been used as a chop-shop for stolen cars. Their immigrant neighbors were inspired and working together formed a community garden close-by. That community garden grew into a network of community gardens in the West End and Southside neighborhoods and became the Southside Community Land Trust (SCLT). The backyard garden that started it all is now SCLT's 3/4-acre City Farm that provides farm-fresh food and flowers for local farmers' markets, groceries, restaurants, coffee shops and food pantries such as the Amos House, Food Not Bombs and the RI Food Bank. It's a model farm demonstrating sustainable, bio-intensive growing practices for children and adults through a summer children's garden program, youth internships, fieldtrips, apprenticeships and public workshops in urban agriculture. Neighborhood children flock to City Farm to learn the names of plants, feel the different textures of leaves, feed the hens, pick flowers for their moms, help weed, look for worms in the compost pile, and perhaps favorite of all, pick and eat edible flowers, sweet cherry tomatoes and delicious raspberries.
But in 2003, a portion of City Farm was threatened by development. No longer part of a neighborhood where lots could not be sold for $1, City Farm is now on prime real estate. And someone saw profit in that and wanted to erect a house in its abundant sage beds and raspberry patch.
SCLT members and supporters like The Nature Conservancy recognized the value, too-- the value of SCLT's work in the community linking low-income families to food and land. And the community came together to save a parcel of land that's value to the community is far greater than its pricetag.
SCLT preserves open space in urban neighborhoods for food production to ensure that everyone has access to affordable, nutritious food regardless of their socio-economic status.
Land conservation is about stewardship and sound management of natural resources. Land conservation is about creating a higher quality of life for the entire community. Land conservation is about being connected to the land, to our food and water sources, to our fellow creatures, to our neighbors, and valuing those connections enough to protect them.
We invite you to visit Southside Community Land Trust's City Farm, to see firsthand how gardeners are growing a better world for all of us!
SCLT's City Farm placed THIRD in Rodales' Organic Gardening Magazine's 2004 Beautiful Vegetable Garden Contest!
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