Gardens around the Midwest cultivate community and fresh food in urban spaces. Words by Rachel Collins | Photography Provided by Urban Harvest STL and The Victory Garden Initiative | April 1, 2015
At the corner of 14th Street and Convention Plaza in downtown St. Louis sits an undistinguished U-Haul dealer. Non-descript office buildings and a sand volleyball court surround it. But, hidden from the street atop this two-story building, is a space that will be transformed into St. Louis first Food Roof Farm, a garden in a concrete jungle. Construction on Urban Harvest STL’s Food Roof Farm began March 16, 2015.
Urban Harvest STL, which began four years ago as a grassroots movement, has grown into an example of urban Midwestern food gardens providing improved access to healthy fruits and vegetables often found for sale, rather, at rural roadside stands. Similarly, The Victory Garden Initiative in Milwaukee has helped establish more than 2,000 gardens in backyards, schools, churches, and businesses since 2009. Like Urban Harvest STL, the organization provides fresh produce, educational programs, and a pleasant place for families in the area to gather.
Here’s how The Victory Garden Initiative and Urban Harvest STL are helping their communities grow healthy, from the ground up.
Garden: Victory Garden Initiative, Milwaukee
Alysse Gear, development and administrative coordinator
“The food garden is a combination of being outside, growing food, and talking to your neighbors. It just comes together to make people really happy and feel good. It has more than a little to do with the fact we are eating food that our body actually understands and appreciates.”
Garden: Victory Garden Initiative, Milwaukee
“We work really hard, but it also feels like there is an element of magic,” Gear says. "We get so much done. There is magic, but there are also hundreds of volunteers who make it all happen.”
Garden: Victory Garden Initiative, Milwaukee
“We have a production area where we grow vegetables and fruits of mostly annual crops that we sell at our farm stands,” Gear says.
Neighborhood children take charge of these produce stands. Whatever money they make, they keep.
Garden: Victory Garden Initiative, Milwaukee
“In a neighborhood that is very much affected by foreclosures and disproportionate levels of violence, Type II diabetes, and lots of problems, we are bringing fresh produce and food access and a really peaceful place for the community to gather,” Gear says.
One of Victory Garden’s larger gardens, the Concordia Garden, is located in a low-income neighborhood. Each spring, Victory Garden gives away five orchards as a part of an outreach initiative and offers educational programs to people about how to grow their own food and preserve it for the colder seasons.
Garden: Urban Harvest STL, St. Louis
Mary Ostafi, executive director
“There are not a lot of options on the ground in downtown St. Louis, so we found the top deck of a parking garage, where the property manager was willing to let us be there temporarily. Last year we moved the community garden 10 stories up on top of a parking garage downtown.”
This parking garage was only a temporary fix, though. The organization has now found a permanent home on top of a two-story U-Haul Neighborhood Dealer at the corner of 14th and Convention Plaza in downtown St. Louis.
Garden: Urban Harvest STL, St. Louis
“This farm will provide us the space and the long-term lease to be able to engage more people in the community and broaden our goals and mission better,” Ostafi says.
Garden: Urban Harvest STL, St. Louis
“Our plan here is to combine the community garden into the space primarily because it is more of a permanent location. We have a long-term lease and then start farming and starting a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program so we can sell produce to the local community, plus continuing our charitable donations,” Ostafi says.
Urban Harvest STL organizers hope they've finally found a home for the community garden. They plan to start a CSA that neighbors buy "shares" in and therefore have access to the food grown in the garden. Urban Harvest STL is also heavily involved with St. Patrick Center, an organization that provides food, housing, and employment assistance to the homeless. Every week during the growing season Urban Harvest STL provides food to the center. They are currently discussing ways to involve St. Patrick’s clients in planting, tending, and harvesting food at the Food Roof Farm.
Garden: Urban Harvest STL, St. Louis
“We had a pretty large volunteer base that didn’t necessarily want to grow their own food, but they wanted to be involved in the project because they saw all the positive impact it was having on the neighborhood,” Ostafi says.
Garden: Urban Harvest STL, St. Louis
The Food Roof Farm will grow root crops like radishes, beets, and turnips; different types of lettuce, greens, kale, and chard; and a variety of tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. To conserve space on their 10,000-square-foot rooftop, the gardeners will avoid large, sprawling crops like corn and pumpkins. Watermelon will be grown vertically on wire mesh trellises. In addition, the roof will have a pollinator garden containing native plants, flowers, chickens, and bees. This pollination garden will help sustain the ecosystem on the Food Roof Farm.
Garden: Urban Harvest STL, St. Louis
“Our vision of success: Make it a place for the community to really own, love, and see as a benefit to their neighborhood. Hopefully, it will influence people and inspire people to start growing their own food, no matter where they live or what living conditions they have. We feel like, if we can grow food on a rooftop in downtown St. Louis, you can grow food anywhere,” Ostafi says.