On a hot summer day, I was roaming the streets with a dear friend of mine. While walking with Kirsten down a sunny block, we came across a community garden. The garden was a street away from her apartment. We spoke about how wonderful the garden was. Kirsten told me how everyone ate the fruits and vegetables in this garden. She told me that this is her community garden. To me, it looked beautiful. There were chairs, tables, flowers, fruits, and vegetables. It was in stark contrast to my neighborhood garden. My garden was abandoned. It was a pile of overgrown, weed-infested land. A jungle gym for rodents. I could see how each community garden was treated, and I wondered why there was such a disparity between them when both places needed gardens. When I moved to Buffalo, I saw the same thing. Abandoned Gardens with faded signs that lacked care. This essay is a piece of my perspective of community gardens and why they matter here in Buffalo and what we can do to make sure we are rebuilding and maintaining them. Community gardens help to feed underprivileged families and individuals. Without these gardens, underserved communities suffer. A lack of food and nutritional education has caused widespread malnutrition. These problems, and the lack of support for community gardens, ultimately stem from broader patterns of environmental racism. In what follows, I dive into what community gardens are, what problem comes up when Buffalo communities don't have community gardens, and what steps we can take to make sure community gardens still exist in the future.
It is everyone’s job to protect these gardens. Everyone has to work to rebuild and upkeep different aspects of the garden such as; the plants, fruits, and vegetables. A peer-reviewed research article titled, ‘’People, Land, and Sustainability: Community Gardens and the Social Dimension of Sustainable Development.’’ looks at how the use of ‘’urban open spaces for gardens is closely related to environmental justice and equity’’.
Community gardens have a stake in the positive or negative development of Buffalo. As defined, community gardens are a part of the social and medical health of different parts of Buffalo. Ferris provides this definition: ‘’What distinguishes a community garden from a private garden is the fact that it is in some sense a public garden in terms of ownership, access, and degree of democratic control.’’ Democratically elected officials own community gardens.These officials are supposed to put funding towards the upkeep of the gardens. They often fail to do this. As a result, gardens are left behind in the advancement of the state. If the officials are responsible for caring for the gardens, they have failed at their jobs. They have aided in the decay of gardens, and, with gardens being an integral part of whole communities, aided in the decay of those communities.
Just as these gardens are left behind, so are the sanitation standards that help keep neighborhood buildings, parks, and streets clean. The community garden was abandoned with rotten tomatoes, and the soil was dry and brittle. This same abandonment appears in the community itself. We see the streets lined up with trash, mice, and other rodents. We also see the same conditions surrounding the nearby buildings and houses. The investment in gardens, activism, clean up efforts, and education promote a more sustainable Buffalo where more families and individuals can survive because of healthy gardens. Ferris joins me in this thought when he communicates how advocating for more sustainable cities should mean the promotion of more access to land for local community purposes such as community gardens, which act as a recreational space for food growth. This piece helps to explain to us that gardens matter because Gardens are tied to the community.
Community gardens are often built around toxic waste sites because local officials and global businesses care more about profits than the low-income people they are harming with their decisions. As I've stated before, if it is these officials who are responsible for taking care of the gardens, they have failed terribly. They have failed by not having sanitation, but they’ve also failed by putting the profits they receive from factory developments over the health of the community gardens. Ferris spells this out for us when he mentions how studies have found that low-income communities have the most gardens built around toxic brown waste sites. People need gardens to grow food, relax, raise children, and develop a safe and flourishing environment. How do we gain more community gardens? I've told you why community gardens exist, and why we should care about them, but how do we do the work?
Jordan Jackson is a 21-year-old, University at Buffalo, student. Jordan is currently obtaining a 4-year degree in Chemistry. He is also a Buffalo native. I approached Jordan and asked to interview him, as we both are a part of the same college program for highly gifted, low-income students. I could talk about community gardens in Buffalo all day, but I did not grow up here. Being from the Buffalo community offers a unique perspective. I wanted to know what someone from Buffalo knew about Community Gardens. ‘’ Community gardens are supposed to provide healthy foods for people who can't find it in a convenience store,’’ Jackson stated. He knew of community gardens but did not get involved with them himself. I wanted to know how people could impact the gardens of Buffalo. “Clean trash around the neighborhoods. A big reason people stopped doing the gardens is that people would leave trash everywhere in conjunction with our mayor never enforcing the sanitation of the gardens,’’ Jackson replied. I understood the emphasis on keeping the gardens clean but I also wanted to know who taught him about the gardens. What organizations were dedicated to changing the state of the gardens? My objective was to find out if youth in Buffalo were educated about gardens, and if so, what organizations were involved in the revival of these community gardens through these education efforts. I asked Jackson, where did your education about community gardens come from? Jackson stated, “It was in my after-school program called Gloria J Parks. Now I'm involved in Open Buffalo! Open Buffalo advocates for improving the diet health of communities as a whole and this includes efforts to clean up the community gardens.’’ Through Jackson’s eyes, we can see how organizations such as Gloria J Parks and Open Buffalo work to help revitalize gardens. We can see how a Buffalo native grew to learn about gardens and what he suggests people like me and others who are reading this piece should do to help the growth of these community gardens. This Buffalo native received a great education and as a result, was able to understand community gardens and aid in the fight for the gardens to be restored. I could see through talking with Jordan that he cared for his community and that gardens were not a taboo subject within Buffalo. Instead, he reinforced the importance of getting the rodents out of Barakah Gardens, being an activist with Open Buffalo, and building a better green garden for the future. This conversation blossomed into a broader conversation about advocacy in revitalizing Buffalo Gardens.
One of the small efforts I advocate for is the investment of time and money into neighborhood community gardens. This investment time-wise, may mean marching as an activist, with local Buffalo organizations as Jordan Jackson has done. Shout in the streets with this organization. Speak about these gardens needing nourishment to help low-income communities. Investment also means working in the gardens to plant vegetables and fruits for food pantries and other food donation organizations whose purpose is to provide more organic groceries to low-income residents. Another time-related effort I advocate for is the education of the youth about community gardens.
Advocacy, and education, which are all-time investments lead back to the big purpose of preserving gardens which helps to fight this environmental oppression. As I've mentioned before, growth cannot happen if there’s no nutrition. These Gardens growing means that we can help build up the next generation of children in the Buffalo community. Monica Miles echoes this point. Monica Miles wrote the article,‘’ Unpacking Environmental Justice Education and Whiteness in a Rust Belt City.’’ Miles professes that the solution to community garden improvement, in Buffalo, is addressing racism. Miles reveals how addressing white supremacy as a whole and allowing our youth to learn about the importance of food banks, gardens, shelters, and other local resources could revive Buffalo from their sickness of unaddressed bigotry. This huge goal of addressing a facet of racism, which is white supremacy, connects to my point because it presents gardens as an integral tool in this fight of reducing racism. It presents preserving gardens as an essential step in a bigger plan to combat discrimination in a rust belt city. Miles draws on gardens in the same way I perceive gardens. He understands that the health of gardens can impact the community as a whole. Based on these solutions presented, In plain words, I want us to notice community gardens.
My goal outside of investing in gardens is for us to move towards reducing the environmental racism in our country overall. Whether it be giving your food scraps to the organizations that tend the gardens or even taking those who you love to visit and spend time in the local garden, there is work to be done. In addition, donating to black-owned, garden tending businesses is also one way to contribute to this fight. Specifically, One Black-owned organization that has gained recognition for its environmental effort is Buffalo Worm Works. This organization turns organic waste into the soil to grow worms and other materials that contribute to growing gardens. They accept donations, sell soil, and educate the various communities of color within Buffalo. Another organization that centers community education and contributions to the Buffalo environment would be Urban Gardens WNY. This organization is a group of activists dedicated to protecting Buffalo Gardens and supporting activism in the community with movements such as the Black Lives Matter movement. They focus on having community members tend to the gardens. Both organizations are great places to support and volunteer at. As I've mentioned earlier, and as Stephanie Cramblet so eloquently states, low-income communities of color are heavily affected by the environmental injustice that is, having a dirty, weed-filled garden. When Buffalo residents and I pay attention to this and call out how our local officials and federal officials are doing nothing to fix this, we help to improve communities such as Barakah, which is a step toward eliminating environmental injustice. Cramblet ties together the community gardens' symbolism. Cramblet states how this abandonment of the gardens and community are all just small actions that amount to the big problem of environmental injustice. I tie together Cramblet symbolism and my mission by professing that when everyone in Buffalo, including organizations, myself, and Jackson, take notice of gardens and advocate, we can work towards healing low-income communities who are heavily affected by the environmental racism that allows community gardens to be the field of weeds instead of a nutritious paradise.
To those who receive this message, We are taking solutions, and applying them in a way that helps to gut the garden with rodents, and the streets with trash. Everyone deserves a beautiful garden and a full belly.
Sources
Cramblet, Stephanie Gwyn. Buffalo in the Brownfields: Environmental Injustice?. Order No. 1514355 State University of New York at Buffalo, 2012 United States -- New YorkProQuest. 10 May 2023 .
Ferris , John, et al. “People, Land and Sustainability: Community ... - Wiley Online Library.” Wiley Online Library, 17 Dec. 2002, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9515.t01-1-00253.
Jordan Jackson Interview, May 8th, 2023.
