Since July 2020, Montgomery County Food Council has convened the Gardening Subcommittee, an initiative of the Food Education Working Group. This subcommittee brings together stakeholders from across the County who are engaged in community and small-space gardening. The Gardening Subcommittee is co-chaired by Michelle Nelson, Community Gardens Manager at Montgomery Parks and Robin Hernandez, Healthy Eating Program Manager at Crossroads Community Food Network. The Gardening Subcommittee priorities are to:
- Facilitate skill-building and technical training opportunities, and collect and share information about technical assistance resources
- Research, and advocate for, educational opportunities and tutorials in Montgomery County related to community and urban gardening
- Continue supporting grant recipients who received grant awards for small space food production projects in Fall 2020, and to
- Increase support of current existing community gardening and victory gardening programs within the County
Thanks to the efforts of this subcommittee and the leadership of co-chairs Robin and Michelle, we’ve made exciting progress and we wanted to share some updates on our impact!
Advocating for funding to support gardening projects that were designed to reduce food insecurity by increasing local food production
In Summer and Fall 2020, Gardening Subcommittee members shared feedback on specific resources that would help make their gardening projects more impactful. Building on the feedback and advocacy of Subcommittee members, the Food Security Task Force launched a grant program to support gardening efforts, in collaboration with Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services and the Montgomery County Food Council. Additional support was provided by the Greater Washington Community Foundation, via the Food for Montgomery fund, which was designed to galvanize private sector and individual support of food access initiatives in the County in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
$201,810 in grant funds were awarded to 12 community organizations who were preparing to tackle food insecurity through a variety of innovative strategies. Grantee organizations were highlighted at several Gardening Grants Showcase virtual events throughout 2021. Some of the featured projects were:
- The Button Farm “Seeds of Hope Project” led by the Menare Foundation
- New gardening efforts at the Emmanuel/Brinklow Community Gardens, led by The Living Legends Awards for Service to Humanity Foundation
- A partnership between Audubon Naturalist Society and Community Health & Empowerment through Education (CHEER), which prioritized growing culturally appropriate foods such as leaves for tamales, chipilín, chilis, epazote, cilantro, and rue
- KPC Buddhist Center, whose program “Empowering people through food gardening” achieved two goals: growing and sharing food, and teaching others how to grow food in the community, too, and
- AfriThrive, dedicated to supporting culturally appropriate foods that are difficult or impossible to find fresh in local markets, especially during the pandemic—such as African Spiderflower, African Nightshade, and pumpkin leaves—and partnering with food banks to provide produce to over 1,100 households throughout Montgomery and Baltimore counties.
To learn more about all the grantees, please check out this announcement from November 2020.
Photo credit: HarvestShare
Learning together
The Gardening Subcommittee is a community of practice, where members can learn from guest speakers and subject matter experts about best practices such as cover cropping, garden planning, seed saving, and more. Subcommittee members also share with each other lessons learned and technical advice. For example, recently the new organization HarvestShare joined a meeting and described how their efforts have grown to recover and donate over 13,000 pounds of fresh produce to local food assistance organizations. HarvestShare also shared information with attendees about data tracking, vegetable weighing and more, assisting other committee members who are interested in improving their own impact tracking.
This is the first image from Michelle Nelson’s presentation on the October 12th Food Security Community Call. Thank you again for presenting, Michelle! Image credit: Montgomery Parks.
Building partnerships in the community
Our collective efforts are strong and more efficient when we find ways to work together, and many members of the Gardening Subcommittee embrace that idea through exploring and building partnerships with other members of the Subcommittee, and the broader community of gardeners and urban farmers throughout Montgomery County. Recently, the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation began to explore ways to establish a community gardening project by their temple, with insights and support from the Montgomery Parks program. Gardening Subcommittee members spoke at a meeting of the Religious Land Use Working Group, connecting with leaders in various faith communities who have questions and ideas about establishing gardens on the land they steward. Additionally, the Food Council was grateful to welcome Michelle Nelson of Montgomery Parks to speak on a recent Food Security Community Call. Michelle presented on the Parks Community Garden program to 60 food assistance organizations and anti-hunger advocates, many of whom are looking forward to growing more food locally to support their food assistance work, in 2022.
Would you like to get involved in the Gardening Subcommittee meetings? Meetings are open to the public and occur every other month, via Zoom. Please email Michelle Caruso at [email protected] to receive email updates and meeting invitations.
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