Category — Horticulture Therapy

Sarah Common, left, and her mother, Julia Common, right, with the help of Jim McLeod in the middle, check on the beehive at the community garden on Vancouver’s East Hastings on March 28, 2013. Photograph by: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun.

This hive of activity offers beekeepers a touch of therapeutic renewal

By Jeff Lee
Vancouver Sun
March 31, 2013

Excerpt:

On a vacant lot next door to the Insite supervised drug injection facility in Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside, a busy little beehive is teaching people about hope and redemption and erasing long-held misconceptions.

For Jim McLeod, at 36 still battling issues with drug addiction, caring for the hive of honey-producing bees has taught him patience and how to look beyond the day-to-day stresses of trying to survive in Canada’s poorest neighbourhood.

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Noga zohar on community garden in beer sheva.

19 gardens are already established while an additional 4 groups are being formed

By Aya Tager
Green Profit
March 27th, 2013

Excerpt:

In September 2012, the Israeli desert city of Beersheva became the second municipality in Israel to staff the newly created post of community gardens coordinator. The multidisciplinary position was born through fruitful cooperation between two of the city’s municipality departments – environmental and welfare, following a strategic process aimed at reinforcing local community and environmental elements while encouraging activism amongst the city’s residents. This move marks a significant shift in policy as the municipality re-defined its role over the issue of community gardens around the city.

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Tina Ksor, left, Jenny Ro’mah and Susan Siu are excited to start their community garden at Moberly elementary school. Photo by Richard Lam.

Back in Vietnam, these young refugees would be living off the land like their forebears

By Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun
March 23, 2013

Excerpt:

“Here it is school, home, sleep, eat. In Vietnam it is farming all day long, every day.”

The garden has the potential to balance both worlds.

Set to break ground April 2 at Moberly, with funding from the City of Vancouver and Vancouver Foundation, it promises to yield fruits and vegetables enough to help feed several families.

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The Urban Farm operates as a closed loop garden which avoids waste and helps to protect the environment.

By Patrice Houssais
Option-naturel@sfr.fr
Tel: 00 33 (0) 2 43 53 26 75

‘Option: Natural’ is a French company which proposes to develop a mobile garden concept called ‘Urban Farm’. Trays made from polyethylene and carbon steel are capable of accommodating a maximum 3.5 m3 of cropland. They drain to ensure surface gardening which benefits our ‘Urban Farms’ because there is a water tank placed at the bottom of the trough (about 900L). It is separated from the upper part containing the cultivated earth and filtered by a partition.

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OXFAM film about garden. Documentaire réalisé par OXFAM sur un rojet d’envergure de micro-agriculture à l’école secondaire Hélène-De Champlain qui accueille des élèves manifestant des troubles graves du comportement.

For 19 years now, Daniel Lefebvre has taught students suffering from severe behaviour disorders.

Excerpt about instructor Daniel Lefebvre:

As the instigator of Les mains de Champlain cooperative that was created a few years ago, Mr. Lefebvre can truly grasp just how committed his peers and students are. “The moment you do something for others and not only for yourself, everything seems to fall into place. The students can feel this and in turn do what it takes to ensure that everything runs smoothly.”

When he established the cooperative, Mr. Lefebvre wanted to offer students a genuine work experience, a unique opportunity to develop their employability and learn to tackle concrete situations in project management.

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This film explores how community gardens benefit public health and was commissioned by NHS (National Health Service) Midlands and East. Find out why Community Gardens are good for us by watching this video.

‘Gardens Where People Grow’ – film made for the National Health Service

Director: John Hill-Daniel
Camera: Carl Jorden, Peter Austin
(Must see. Mike)

NHS Midlands and East commissioned Martineau Gardens to report how the community garden is a model for improving public health and resilience in Birmingham, with particular focus on the impact of the garden and gardening on the mental health and well being of the people of Birmingham. The film documents the activities of Martineau Gardens (and other urban growing projects) with evidence from staff, volunteers and visitors who use the Gardens.

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As part of the World Food Day, the Johannesburg Society for the Blind an organisation, that was established in 1926, harvested the third batch of spinach from their organic aquaponics garden.

Veggie Tunnels

By Tapiwa Nyakabau
Johannesburg Society For The Blind
Oct 29, 2012

On Friday the 19th of October 2012 at 10:00 hrs we had an event to celebrate the harvesting of vegetables from our Veggie Tunnels at Johannesburg Society For The Blind. The 2 Veggie Tunnels were set up on the 8th of August with financial support from, a well wisher and Friend of Johannesburg Society For The Blind, Mr Jerry Steeneveldt. The event was also meant to celebrate World Food Day which took place at the beginning of that week.

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Stony Brook Heights Rooftop Farm.

Now, hospitals are joining the trend too, adding farms to their rooftops to help provide patients with the freshest produce available.

Food, Nutrition and Science
From The Lempert Report
Oct 29, 2012

Excerpt:

One thriving rooftop garden is making headlines at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island. The Stony Brook Heights Rooftop Farm resides on the roof of the fourth floor of Stony Brook’s Health Science tower and is managed by staff nutritionists, dietetic interns and Sustainability Studies students from the University. This year’s crop produced more than 400 pounds with 33 varietals of vegetables and herbs harvested. And if that wasn’t impressive enough, the food that is grown here is served directly to hospital patients.

The farm has been so successful that it is currently serving as a model for each of the 10 community gardens throughout Suffolk County, which, like the Stony Brook Heights Rooftop Farm, are supported by the New York State Department of Health grant. There are plans to expand the program in 2013 to produce enough food to donate to organizations in need of fresh and healthy food.

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Chris Costello, a resident at the Lord’s Place, talks describes how working in the garden helps him. Photo by Mark Randall.

“The garden is our miracle. What the garden has done is it is a place where the guys can go and meditate. When they get upset they can go outside in the garden and put their hands in the dirt.”

By Ben Wolford
Sun Sentinel
October 4, 2012

Excerpt:

BOYNTON BEACH
— Not long ago, Chris Costello was homeless and fighting a losing battle against alcoholism.

But these days, his whole life has changed. He’s been sober more than two years, and he has an apartment at The Lord’s Place, a recovery center in Boynton Beach.

Lately, Costella also has something to keep him busy. He and 50 other formerly homeless men on Northeast Fourth Street are finding solace and, in many ways, purpose in tending to an urban garden in their backyard. A family in Palm Beach put up $10,000 to get the project going, and the residents of this community of four neat apartment buildings are putting in the sweat equity.

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“Most of the gardens documented in this book have been destroyed.”

By Ms. Margaret Morton and Ms. Diana Balmori
Yale University Press, 160 pages
February 22, 1995

Jimmy’s garden on the Lower East Side of Manhattan – an assortment of stones and garbage bags, five tires, a chair, a skid, a refrigerator shelf, some ailanthus trees and goldfish, a wooden fence, and a pond with water carried by hand from a nearby fire hydrant – was recently bulldozed by the city. Jimmy then disappeared. Anna’s garden is surrounded by a tall chainlink fence and filled with a menagerie of dolls and stuffed animals. The animals are whole, the dolls are maimed. Anna is a recluse who speaks to no one. The neighbors say she was in a concentration camp as a child.

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Jennifer Johns interviews Hank Herrera of Dig Deep Farms

Go Liv! TV
Sept. 27, 2012

Dig Deep Farms and Produce is a social enterprise and a project of the Alameda County Deputy Sheriffs Activities League. Our vision is to create a vibrant, sustainable local food economy that brings fresh, healthy affordable food to the residents of Ashland and Cherryland. We will create a successful business based on growing, packing, packaging, processing, distributing and selling fresh, healthy food.

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Xavier Wright, who previously lived in a homeless shelter, works in Verde Gardens farm. Photo by Zachary Fagenson.

As part of an innovative effort to tackle Miami’s problem with homelessness, Xavier Wright has traded the streets of downtown for a live-in community farm project

By Zachary Fagenson
Reuters
Sep 9, 2012

Excerpt:

Verde Gardens, a $17.2 million, 145-unit complex built for Miami’s formerly homeless, boasts a 22-acre (9-hectare) organic farm planted with a variety of fruits and vegetables from potatoes to bananas and pigeon peas.

Wright, who previously served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq, had resided in a homeless shelter with his 6-year-old autistic son before moving to Verde Gardens.

The farm is tapping into a rising trend in the restaurant industry to use locally grown seasonal products.

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Follow Ah Lun, a refugee from Myanmar, and others as they put down new roots at two IRC-run community gardens and adjust to life in the United States.

‘Growing Good from the Ground Up’: International Rescue Committee launches campaign to support innovative New Roots program for refugees in the U.S.

By Lucy Carrigan
Media Relations Officer
International Rescue Committee
Sept 4, 2012

The International Rescue Committee has launched a multi-channel campaign to support New Roots, a dynamic community gardening and nutrition program that enables refugees to grow, harvest and sell fresh and affordable produce while integrating into their new communities across the United States.

“We want newly arrived refugees to have a healthy start here, but in many communities where they can afford to live, finding healthy and affordable produce is not easy,” says Ellee Igoe, the IRC’s U.S. advisor for food security and agriculture. “The New Roots program is changing that.”

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Green thumb: Kenji Nakahara, who spent his entire working life at Toyota Motor Corp., tends vegetables he is growing on a farm in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, in July. KYODO

City provides all the training as baby boomers leave automaker

By Yui Matsutake
Japan Times
Aug. 30, 2012

NAGOYA — In the city of Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, a growing number of retired corporate employees have taken up farming thanks to a city-run agricultural training program.

The city, the home base of Toyota Motor Corp., launched the training center in 2004 ahead of a surge in the number of retirees when baby boomers began reaching retirement age in around 2007.

It was a big hit and now more than 250 participants are actively engaged in farming.

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Mark Kearney, center, leads a group of students on a tour of the Court Street Urban Farm in the Central Ward section of Newark. Mr. Kearney came to the farm after getting out of prison two years ago as part of the Greater Newark Conservancy’s vocational programming for offenders. Photo by Kevin Hagen for The Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal: Down Home in Newark

By Heather Haddon
Wall Street Journal
August 8, 2012

Excerpt:

NEWARK—Newark may be known for many things, but its homegrown hydroponic lettuce, chicken coops and bushels of local kale aren’t among them.

But city officials in New Jersey’s largest city are increasingly turning to urban farming as a tool to reclaim vacant land and provide jobs, just as similarly gritty cities like Detroit and Baltimore have already done.

“We want Newark to be a green city,” said Adam Zipkin, Newark’s deputy mayor and the director of the Department of Economic and Housing Development. “It’s an attempt to create a local food system and to grow produce here that we distribute locally.”

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By Eva Tam
Wall Street Journal
Aug 4, 2012

A rooftop garden maintained by the intellectually disabled may be a new solution to a healthier and happier living in Hong Kong. The WSJ’s Eva Tam explains how this project can benefit one of the most densely-populated cities in the world.

“Customers buy from Project Grow not because it’s a charity but because it’s good food.”

By Rebecca Gerendasy
Food Farmer Earth
Aug 1, 2012

Excerpt:

Tim Donovan, who calls himself “a farmer and maker,” leads the agriculture team at Project Grow, a program of Port City Development Center, an arts and farming organization that works with adults with disabilities. The project brings together people active in the arts, farming and community organizing and has grown from one small plot of about an eighth of an acre to four plots covering more than an acre and a half.

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See video of the gardens on KCCI here.

Program helps refugees become more self-sufficient through selling extra produce.

By Lisa Lavia Ryan
Des Moines Register
July 26, 2012

Excerpt:

A university grant and a lot of sweat equity on the part of Lutheran Services in Iowa and Des Moines’ Plymouth Congregational Church have helped more than 100 refugee families feel more at home by cultivating garden plots to call their own.

For some, the gardens are an important income supplement that enables them to sell the food they grow and harvest.

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A thriving best-practice disability enterprise

By Mandy Nolan
Echo
Issue 26-50

Excerpt:

On Saturday June 2 the Byron Bay Herb Nursery celebrates 20 years in the game.

As anyone who runs a commercial venture knows, two decades in a highly competitive industry is a great achievement. It’s not unusual for operators to open and close quickly, often within the same month.

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“The garden is a place where I stop thinking about my own problems and just concentrate on what’s growing.”

ioby New York City
March 8, 2012

Excerpt:

For many city dwellers, the concept of urban farming seems contradictory. For others, it provides a way to grow fresh food in their corner lots, backyards, and windowsills. But for the people living at four supportive housing residences in Brooklyn, NY, urban farming has come to represent a new lease on life.

The four residences in question are operated by Services for the UnderServed (SUS), a non-profit founded in 1978. The ultimate aim of their efforts is to help New Yorkers achieve independence by providing supportive services and housing to the city’s most underserved populations: people with developmental disabilities, people suffering from HIV or AIDS, and people who have histories of mental illness and homelessness. Following examples set by other city non-profits, including Added Value, a farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that offers long-term skill building to teenagers, SUS opened up its first urban garden in June of 2010.

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