Urban Agriculture: 2023 In Review
2023 presented a year of growth for the Community Garden Program—so much so that we changed the name! Our Urban Agriculture Program emerged to fully represent the CGC’s work and efforts around food and access.
Although our community gardens remain integral components of neighborhood growth and further our efforts to educate and support sustainable gardening, we also needed to look beyond the garden to issues surrounding food and access as a whole.
Community Gardens
In 2023, we were able to increase the access to quality food for those in vulnerable communities by collaborating with leading organizations who have identified these areas of opportunity. Through these collaborations, we were able to focus on underserved communities and the people who live in them, working to make sure everyone feels included and has a stake in their local food system.
Here are some highlights from our Community Gardens Program in 2023:
We continued to build our garden network while ensuring that each garden has the tools it needs to thrive in its community. Through efforts like increasing community engagement by attending council meetings and working closely with Cincinnati officials and other leading organizations, we strengthened our existing network, added two new gardens and reactivated three existing gardens in 2023.
With the help of the City of Cincinnati and other leading environmental organizations, we have increased our efforts to divert tons of organic matter from our waste streams by building 11 Johnson-Su Bioreactors within our community garden network.
We installed native pollinator gardens in two of our community gardens that will help support our local ecosystem and wildlife. The plants used were grown at the CGC by our Horticulturist and volunteers as part of our ReRooted programl
We were able to work closely with the City of Cincinnati to install water access in our Madisonville Community Garden, an improvement that will enable this garden to produce larger crop yields and contribute more robustly to the local food system.
“Attending the garden in Cincinnati was very heartwarming. From the outskirts, it’s hard to see everything that’s going on, but once you enter, I would describe it as being in a garden wonderland. I really enjoyed my experience.”
HUB Garden Classes
Through the CGC’s programming, we’re building knowledge and awareness of urban agriculture, healthy food and the local food system by creating safe and welcoming in-the-garden learning opportunities. In 2023, we increased out HUB Gardens from seven to ten to give more communities the opportunity to engage and learn.
We completed 20 of our free in-the-garden classes in our HUB gardens and increased attendance by five percent over 2022. We added diverse subject matter, including a class on cultural crops in partnership with instructors and students from Central State University, a land-grant university with a thriving agriculture program focusing on specialty and cultural crops. We also added classes that addressed our current climate crisis and how we can grow more food by pushing the growing season by six or more weeks using season extension techniques.
“The community garden we attended provided a rich sense of African influence. Considering that I am African American/Caribbean, it almost felt as if I was home! They really provided a clear glimpse of their narrative and intentions through their garden which was beautiful to witness.”
“HUB Garden classes were a success in the Carthage Community Garden. Participants said they would be back. We had an authentic farm-to-plate experience. Not only was it tasty, but it was instructional about nutrition. The class on Natural Pest Control was packed with information on the subject. Kymisha was not only well informed on both classes, but she was also genuinely thrilled to talk to the participants about other garden issues. She was also sensitive to the neighborhood’s needs and had Spanish interpreters for our ESL residents.”
Community Garden Development Training (CGDT)
Community gardens can help transform neighborhoods and create opportunities for people to work together to drastically decrease the miles their food has to travel from farm to fork. Our Community Garden Development Training (CGDT) empowers people by giving them the education and skills to coordinate a community garden. The 11-week training course is taught by CGC staff and partners from the OSU Extension Office, Central State University, the University of Cincinnati Office Sustainability and Master Gardener volunteers. In 2023, 17 people received certificates at the end of the course and are now coordinating thriving school, community, homeschool and church gardens in their communities.
“Each year the CDGT class is my most gratifying speaking engagement. I always leave feeling inspired by the willingness of the class to listen, to share their stories and to take part in the essential work toward environmental equity. I am confident that each group receives the entire message and that over the next few years the graduates will create tangible and lasting change in our community. Thank you to the Civic Garden Center for hosting such an encouraging and accessible program!”
Looking Ahead
In 2024, we’ll continue to develop and support our growing network by empowering individuals and communities through sustainable agriculture, education and community development. In addition to running CGDT, we’ll introduce a Market Garden Training series designed to prepare individuals to take on entrepreneurial roles in increasing access to healthy food in their communities and beyond. We’ll continue building relationships with leading sustainability and environmental agencies to be able to impact our communities in significant ways. And we will offer our free summertime HUB Garden classes as well!