Lansing’s
Hunter Park GardenHouse is less than a year old, and is already a huge success with its
Eastside neighbors. The state-of-the-art, 2,880 square foot greenhouse gives neighbors space to grow food for their families and access to starter plants so they can grow food in their own backyards.
On the other end of the age spectrum, currently celebrating its 25th year, the Greater Lansing Food Bank's
Garden Project helps both home and community gardeners in Lansing and East Lansing grow and preserve produce by giving people individual plots in neighborhood community gardens.
Together, these two projects are helping to spark a small rural resurgence in urban Lansing, providing community gardens that help educate neighbors about sustainability and give city residents more access to locally grown foods.
And by breathing life back into some of the area’s underused parks and vacant lots, these gardens are also giving many areas in Lansing a tasteful, sustainable face lift.
Green House NeighborhoodThe GardenHouse project, part of the Allen Neighborhood Center’s
Youth Service Corps, puts a group of young volunteers to work to improve the Eastside by growing fresh, local food. Last year, the Corp started a garden at Bingham Elementary School and sold the harvest at the farmers market. This year, they’re growing food for local restaurants.
“We run workshops, we have an urban gardener class that begins in the fall, and a 10-week comprehensive class that will have a certification with it,” says GardenHouse’s director, K’Anna Burton.
“Our goal has been to engage the neighbors in their park, in food, in food security and in community development,” she says. “The Garden House is also a place and not just a production site, and not just a demonstration site and not just an educational site. That’s why one third of the GardenHouse is paved and set up to be a classroom area or a gathering area for neighbors.”
Kids who help with the Eastside’s Youth Service Corps get paid in produce, which provides healthy, locally grown food for Eastside families.
“Greens grow exceptionally well in the off season in a greenhouse—spring, fall and winter—so we’re working on educating folks that greens are very healthy, very nutritious,” says Burton. “Folks have kind of gotten away from eating them and so we’re also working on nutritional goals and that kind of thing as well—to help folks just be happier and healthier human beings on the Eastside.”
The project is helping many in the community who are struggling as well. “We have a young boy who comes in and he volunteers. He can’t quite join the Youth Service Corp, because at age 12 or 13, he basically is the head of his household. He’ll come in and say, ‘We don’t have enough food this week. What do you have that’s extra that we could harvest?’”
Burton says the GardenHouse also creates a sense of ownership among Eastside kids and gives them a productive a way to spend their free time—and maybe gently adding some environmental awareness to the mix.
“If you support and appreciate this park you’re less likely to take a new planted tree and break it in half,” says Burton. “You’re less likely to pull up the flowers, just not thinking, just being bored or [because] it seems meaningless to you."
“This is a friendly place,” she says. “What we find, with us being active in the GardenHouse, [is] actually more kids come and play on the playground set, more folks walk the walking path. It just continues to grow more community involvement and delight in this absolutely gorgeous park.”
“We are one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Michigan,” says Burton. “All different colors, all different countries, all different kinds of folks. Revitalizing Hunter Park has just been a part of presenting that to the rest of the city.”
An Edible CommunityThe Greater Lansing Food Bank’s
Garden Project program supports the work of the Food Bank, whose 200 volunteers and 22 pantries in Ingham County also distribute 1.2 million meals each year to Ingham County’s children, seniors, working families and those on a fixed income.
“In today’s emergency food system, a lot of the food people are getting is canned and boxed and all of that,” says Anne Rauscher, director of the Garden Project. “So access to fresh fruits and vegetables is really important, especially to low income individuals. It’s hard to get access to a grocery store that sells fruits and vegetables.”
In addition to helping feed area families, the gardens also beautify the area where they are located, giving neighbors a sense of place and reason to interact with members of their community.
Casey Williamson and her husband are good examples. They moved to the Lansing area from Austin, Texas in 2006.
“Shortly after we moved to Lansing, I was digging a new garden in our front yard and one of our neighbors stopped by to offer her tiller,” says Williamson. “That was Jean Lynch-Brandon, who is the very wonderful garden leader at Letts Community Garden.”
Case and her husband soon decided to join the garden, in part because it offered better growing conditions that her yard, and partly “because we thought it would be a good way to get to know more of our neighbors,” says Williamson, who has been growing produce at Letts ever since. “Vegetable gardening is a very special way to get to know people. Food is personal and real and important, and yet it's not private, so it's something strangers can talk about.”
“It's hard to express how much these exchanges have made me come to feel at home in a new city,” she says. “I'm very glad there are too many trees for me to grow vegetables in our yard.”
When asked how the gardens impact individuals in the neighborhoods, Garden Project director Anne Rauscher gives this example: “When we were just helping open up the gardens, I was walking back over to the shed to put some tools away and this truck comes squealing around the corner with music blaring. I see them brake at me and I was like, ‘Oh boy, what do they have to share with me?’
“And the woman yells out the window, ‘I just love these gardens so much! It’s one of my favorite things about living in this neighborhood!’ And that was pretty neat to hear.”
Elizabeth Silver is a feature writer for Capital Gains and loves organic, garden fresh tomatoes grown with love.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:
Tomatoes in one of Lansing's many community gardens
The Paradise Community Garden
Seeds available through the Garden Project
The tools of the trade
Anne Rauscher of the Garden Project
Casey Williamson in her Lansing garden
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie