The Nashville Food Project’s Blog
Garden Teamwork
This candid photo captures two friends from Glencliff's International Teen Outreach Program as they hand off a bucket of seed potatoes. We truly love having these students in our garden--they bring so much joy and positivity with them every single time.
Harvest Hands in the Garden
Harvest Hands youth volunteer regularly in our gardens, always looking forward to new experiences. See what they have been up to.
We love partnering with Harvest Hands, a nonprofit down the street from our Wedgewood Urban Gardens. Their youth come to the garden on a regular basis as part of their after-school programming. Look what they have been up to.
Sorrel is a sour-tasting herb and the youth who come to our Wedgewood Urban Gardens seriously cannot get enough of it! Beyond sour-flavored candy, people around the world use sorrel to make stews, salads and green borscht. Let us know if you have any creative suggestions for how we can incorporate sorrel into our meals!
The Harvest Hands students know just how natural Las Paletas popsicles are because they help add fruit and veggie waste to our compost pile almost every week. We love Las Paletas for sharing their compost and we love Harvest Hands for helping. Of course, we also adore the popsicles and the students on their own accord!
North Nashville Green Thumbers Welcome Spring
After a long winter of anticipation, the McGruder community gardeners (or Green Thumbers as they like to be called) came together last Saturday for the garden’s official spring opening. There are 17 raised beds in the North Nashville garden and every single one has been claimed!
by Madi Holtzman, TNFP Garden Coordinator
After a long winter of anticipation, the McGruder community gardeners (or Green Thumbers as they like to be called) came together on a recent Saturday for the garden’s official spring opening. There are 17 raised beds in the North Nashville garden and every single one has been claimed! In fact, we are considering building more beds to accommodate the high level of interest. The Green Thumbers are a wonderfully diverse group of people: multi-generation families with children of all ages, elderly couples who have lived in North Nashville for years, participants from the Hope for Health wellness program, and some people who came knowing no-one and left with new friends.
All community gardens allow people to grow their own food, but the level of community inherent to each garden can vary quite a bit. For some, the word “community” simply points to the fact that the garden is a shared space. But, in my opinion, the really special gardens have layers of community—a fabric of relationships among the gardeners that goes much deeper than simply growing vegetables in adjacent plots.
The most inspiring aspect of the Green Thumbers is the gracious, neighborly posture with which they approached the McGruder garden on day one. When I explained that everyone could paint a wood sign to mark their plots, there was a pause. Nobody wanted to be the first to run over and grab a paintbrush because nobody there was selfishly motivated. A few Green Thumbers specifically told me that they are growing for their neighbors; they will only eat the produce that nobody else wants. A few more Green Thumbers decided to share plots to save space for others who might want to join the garden. And Reverend John Beach, the elderly reverend who grew vegetables in every single bed last year before his neighbors were aware of the space, refused to take his own plot. He never believed that so many people would show up to garden at McGruder, and he now insists on sharing a bed with his wife to encourage the unexpected enthusiasm.
We look forward to supporting the Green Thumbers throughout the season with monthly educational workshops. You can teach people how to weed and seed and harvest, but creating a safe space for sharing food and relationships depends on the dispositions of the gardeners themselves. I am so grateful to work with this group of gracious, gentle people who are already transforming the McGruder garden into such a space.
