Gardens for Everyone
BY SUSANNA KLINGENBERG
PHOTOS COURTESY OF INTER-FAITH FOOD SHUTTLE
I magine a generous bowl of steaming vegetable soup on a chilly day. Or a classic tomato and mayonnaise sandwich in the heat of summer. It’s nourishing, it’s delicious, and here’s the best part: It’s made with produce from your own backyard.
A garden-grown meal is no small victory, since behind every plate of homegrown food is a mountain of hidden benefits, like physical activity, reduced grocery bills, mental rest and a feeling of personal resilience. These benefits are what motivate Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s Gardens for Everyone initiative, an innovative approach to alleviating hunger and promoting self-sufficiency among Triangle residents and those in surrounding counties. The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle provides 4’x8′ raised-bed garden boxes, rich soil, starter seeds and plentiful support at a pay-what-you-can price, starting at $25 for the first box.
“When we build someone a garden, we don’t just give them a box of soil and seeds. We give them keys to the family,” says Inter-Fath Food Shuttle’s Gardens for Everyone coordinator, Lynn Conyers. “They’ll get ongoing support, and connection to a community that wants to help each other succeed.”
Meeting an Existing Need
It’s no surprise that growing your own food has tremendous benefits for people’s physical and mental health, as well as for their budgets. In North Carolina, even a small garden box can yield many pounds of produce each season. But Conyers says turning a plot of land into a productive garden can bring insurmountable challenges, especially for those who are on a budget or new to gardening.
Consider, he says, the startup costs of a raised bed garden: You’ll need lumber, nails, tools, soil, compost and seeds. Then you’ll need carpentry skills, time and physical strength to build the box. Next, you’ll have to learn how to plant seeds, cultivate seedlings, fend off pests and discern when to harvest. And that doesn’t even take into account the learning curve associated with cooking fresh produce.
Nikki Sanders applied for a bed three years ago to create a project for her son Paris, who is on the autism spectrum. “We’d grown houseplants, but we had to learn about weeding and Japanese beetles and rabbits … it’s been a lot of fun, but it’s definitely been a challenge,” says Sanders.
Gardens for Everyone helps Triangle residents overcome all those challenges with a system that’s evolved along with the needs of the community.
How Gardens for Everyone Works
Gardens for Everyone grew from an explosion of applications for the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s community garden plots during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We thought, ‘Instead of them coming to us, why don’t we just go to them?’” says Conyers. “We started with just one guy and one truck. Six hundred garden beds later, we haven’t looked back.”
People interested in a raised-bed garden box can apply on the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s website. Priority is given to low- and middle-income applicants, who must have access to a relatively flat open space, water, sunshine and (if they are renters) permission from their landlord.
After an initial site visit to ensure the location has sufficient space and sunlight, the Gardens for Everyone team shows up with supplies, volunteers, and 4,000 pounds of topsoil and compost per box. At the end of one dirty, sweaty morning, a 4’x8′ patch of yard has been transformed into a garden, ready for planting. “It was such a good day,” says Sanders. “And because my son Paris got to help build the garden, he feels a sense of ownership.”
But the garden installation is only the beginning of their journey.
Connection To Past and Present
An unexpected benefit of getting your hands in the soil is a tangible connection to your roots—to the generations before you who also nourished their families from the garden.
“Probably 90% of the folks who get a box do it initially for the generational connection,” says Conyers. “They’ll say, ‘My grandmother, my mom, my uncle, they had a farm or they loved to grow things, and I just want to feel connected to them.’”
This wish has motivated Mel Williams, whose wife gifted him a Gardens for Everyone raised bed for Christmas as part of the organization’s new “Gift a Garden” program. “My father had a long tradition of growing delicious tomatoes—he usually had 50 plants!” says Williams. “So I wanted to continue that tradition.”
Gardens for Everyone also helps foster community connections, both in person and online. The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle holds classes at their community gardens, where garden recipients can learn new gardening techniques and troubleshoot with mentors. Online, the Gardens for Everyone Facebook group is a welcoming space where people come to get inspiration, commiserate mess-ups and, of course, show off their wins. When a fellow gardener posts a picture of a prized piece of produce, “they’ll get all the hearts and likes and encouraging comments,” says Conyers. “It really is a community.”
Expanding Into the Future
Because Gardens for Everyone has been such a runaway success in its first few years, they are expanding their reach in several ways. Along with gardens for homeowners and renters, they have installed boxes for daycares, churches, businesses, senior centers and City of Raleigh parks. They’re also piloting build-your-own-bed workshops, which have been extremely popular in rural areas.
Finally, they are in the beginning phases of implementing a “Gift a Garden” option, through which people at any income level can purchase a garden box (either for themselves or as a gift for a loved one) and the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle will gift a garden box to someone who could not otherwise afford one.
Conyers points out that while more traditional ways of alleviating community hunger, such as food banks, are necessary, they don’t provide a path to lasting self-sufficiency. “Growing a garden is an invitation,” he says. “To a community, to sharing with friends and to the knowledge that you can learn how to care for yourself.” As grocery prices rise and America faces epidemics of both obesity and loneliness, Gardens for Everyone provides a timely—and delicious—solution for Triangle residents and beyond.
