Gardens for Good
Planting it Forward
With a mission to increase organic acreage and access to organic food, we created an organic garden grant program in partnership with Organic Gardening Magazine. The program, aptly name Gardens for Good, invites non-profit organizations to put their communities forward for a chance to inspire change from the ground up!
Applications for 2012 Gardens for Good Grants accepted May 1st - 31st 2012. Voting opens June 1st.
Meet our 2011 Gardens for Good grant recipients:
CAPI, is a Minneapolis-based organization focused on social justice and anti-poverty initiatives among immigrants and refugees in the Twin Cities. They support their community in many different ways, from providing gardening tools and supplies to securing site permissions and assisting residents in preparing the community garden site for planting. The Gardens for Good grant will help CAPI create new gardens in poverty-stricken neighborhoods and make improvements to existing gardens. A portion of the gardeners’ harvest will also benefit the wider community through CAPI’s food shelf and Elder Care program.
GroW Gardens is volunteer-led program at Washington DC’s George Washington University. Harvest from the gardens serves local Miriam’s Kitchen, a social service agency that provides nutritious meals, case management, and art therapy to local homeless and at-risk citizens. The Gardens for Good grant will help enhance the existing garden infrastructure and expand the project to other sites in order to maximize yields and serve more people.
The Hamilton Community Garden Network (HCGN) is a vibrant but small group of committed garden enthusiasts who provide a wide array of support to emerging and established community gardens in Hamilton, Ontario. The Gardens for Good grant will be used to fund Oliver’s Garden Project, a program inspired by a young boy that provides individual citizens with the knowledge and resources needed to share their backyards and homegrown produce with the wider community.
Meet our 2010 Gardens For Good grant recipients:
The Damayan Garden Project’s mission is to promote sustainable, local food production and sow the seeds of healthy living and ecological awareness through hands-on gardening activities. The organization plans used the Gardens fot Good grant to fund the Shakespeare Children’s Garden at Lichgate which contributes to local food drives, helps teach children where food comes from, inspires enthusiasm about healthy eating, re-establishes a lacking sense of community and encourages people to take control of what they eat.
Vallejo People’s Garden is a community coalition grown out of hard times following the closure of their city’s Naval Shipyard and enduring struggle with the economic downturn. The Gardens for Good grant allowedthe coalition, comprised of volunteers from the Global Center for Success, the Betty Frank Senior Lunch Program, Community Action Partnership Solano, and the Regional Office of the USDA Forest Service, to create a “People’s Garden” which provides fresh organic produce for the area’s homeless and needy. The garden also serves the people of Vallejo as an outdoor classroom and a community hub for all ages.
SOLEFood is an Enterprising Non Profit (ENP) established in 2009 by United We Can. It is an urban farm that provides training and employment opportunities to residents from Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. Their locally grown food is sold to restaurants, at Farmers Markets and community organizations with similar aims of improving neighbourhood food security. Employees see the farm as a place for self-growth and healthy community development, while beautifying their neighbourhood. SOLEfoodused the Gardens for Good grant to expand production at their current farm to increase yields,provide meaningful employment, and build healthy relationships around healthy food.
