Closing the Loop
Supporting local food systems.
With our Garden Partners program, members have the option to share their earned compost with local farms and gardens, who create equitable access to healthy food in our communities.
Find a garden
The Asheville Buncombe Community Garden Network is coordinated by Asheville based nonprofit, Bountiful Cities, connecting almost 40 gardens. Bountiful Cities is able to coordinate shared workdays, a tool library, seed library, volunteer recruitment, potlucks, and shared resources - like COMPOST! Bountiful Cities is also able to provide free workshops to community gardeners on all kinds of related topics like seed starting, and mushroom log inoculation. The goal of the network is to strengthen neighborhood-powered food initiatives through collaboration.
Our Buncombe County School Garden Partners currently include Evergreen Community Charter School, The Growing Wild Forest School, and Issac Dickson Elementary School. When you share your earned compost with Buncombe County Schools, these participating schools can request compost delivery to be used in their school gardens to grow healthy food and educate students about the importance of healthy soil!
Eliada’s Campus Farm program provides food and educational opportunities for its 400 students and residents 365 days a year. The farm currently consists of three growing facilities: a geodesic Grow Dome, a hoop house, and a learning garden. Between the three facilities, their farm program is equipped to grow year-round. Produce from the farm goes directly to Eliada’s on-campus kitchen where it is used to create nutritional, fresh meals for the students served on campus. A portion of the Learning Garden is also dedicated to a therapeutic tea garden where they grow herbs youths help bag and drink as a self-soothing ritual. Additional produce grown outside of the kitchen's needs is supplied to food boxes through our Healthy Opportunities Pilot program, giving food boxes to community members in need.
They use a geodesic dome for year-round growing using hydroponics, soil beds, and aquaponics. Their 3-season hoop house is off-grid and utilizes 70 ft long raised beds for things like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, and other salad items. Their Learning Garden is 1/4 acre and utilizes a deep mulch compost system and no-till practices to, without the use of chemicals, grow larger quantities of things like beans, potatoes, onions, squash, melons, salad greens, and tea herbs. This spring they're putting in a berry patch with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. The Campus farm program is fully grant and donor funded and is one of the several programs that non-profit Eliada Homes operates on its campus as part of their child and youth services. Our Farm manager, in addition to growing all this food, also teaches hands-on agricultural education classes to their K-12 students on a weekly basis. Students are the ones helping to grow this food right alongside our Farm Manager.
At Lighthouse, their mission is to provide safe and supportive homes for individuals seeking both stable housing and a place to heal. They are dedicated to creating a nurturing environment that promotes healing and personal growth, helping individuals rebuild their lives, foster lasting recovery, and reintegrate into their communities with renewed joy, peace, and meaning.
The Rhoades Property Garden serves as a space for UNCA students and faculty and Asheville community members to learn and participate in sustainable agriculture practices.The intergenerational activities that are practiced in the garden are intended to make connections between the diverse communities and neighborhoods of Asheville, educational institutions, and various sectors of the food system. The Rhoades Property garden provides a fun way to learn about sustainability and organic gardening and serves as an opportunity to gain and share knowledge, which in turn will create a community response to local food security.
The Sand Hill Community Garden is located at the Buncombe County Sports Park in West Asheville. They donate produce to MANNA, a local free farmers market, and a free community meal at a local church. Please help them keep this neighborhood garden growing strong by sharing your earned compost.
The Shiloh community is rooted in African American settlements dating back to the 19th century. Agriculture serves as a tradition in the area, one they are working to revive through their community garden and other such projects. Youth involvement at the Shiloh Community Garden includes not only the experience of growing produce organically, but lessons in food preparation, healthy eating, permaculture, sustainability, entrepreneurship, literacy, leadership and self-governance.
Southside Community Garden is located in the Southside Community, a historic African-American neighborhood and supported by volunteers and community members dedicated to growing food and community involvement. The project has welcomed a place for both neighbors and residents of the Southside Community, plus volunteers and community groups from outside the neighborhood to connect to agriculture and healthy eating in a food desert, meaning a place that lacks access to healthy food and groceries. The food grown in donated to the Southside kitchen which serves donation based meals and is open to the public.
Food Well Alliance's mission is to strengthen community farms and gardens to create thriving communities that value local, healthy food. We do this by connecting people, ideas, leadership, and capital. Over the past three years, Food Well Alliance has directly supported 21 farms and roughly 100 community gardens located within Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett. One of the ways in which Food Well Alliance has supported community farms and gardens is by providing them with high quality, locally produced compost.
Fresh Harvest provides a home delivery of local organic produce throughout Greater Atlanta. The Fresh Harvest Garden is a small diversified garden located in Clarkston, GA. The garden’s mission is to demonstrate sustainable growing practices, foster community, and engage local youth through horticultural therapy field trips. The produce is distributed weekly in Fresh Harvest baskets and sold at a subsidized market for Clarkston's refugee community.
Our Fulton County School Garden Partners currently include Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School - Elementary Campus and Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School - Middle Campus, Parkside Elementary Learning Garden, Westside Wondergarden at Westside Atlanta Charter School, Benteen Elementary School, Morningside Elementary School, and Cleveland Avenue Elementary School. When you share your earned compost with Fulton County Schools, these participating schools can request compost delivery to be used in their school gardens to grow healthy food and educate students about the importance of healthy soil!
The Garden at Neighborhood Church in association with The Atlanta Ecumenical Urban Farm Network, works together to combat food insecurity by helping Metro Atlanta to Worship Well and Eat Well. They grow year-round, generally things like tomatoes, carrots, various greens, garlic, herbs, and onions. They use all natural methods and grow in raised beds.
Georgia Organics is a statewide nonprofit working to connect organic food from Georgia farms to Georgia families. The organization hosts a demonstration garden at its Atlanta offices where they utilize healthy soil and compost to grow seasonal vegetables and herbs. Harvests support a variety of potlucks, partner meetings and staff lunches throughout the year.
Global Growers Network partners with people from diverse cultures who grow fresh food for their families and for local marketplaces. Together, they build and sustain networks of people, land, resources, and markets in order to create a more equitable food system that is driven by cultural diversity, inclusive economies, and regenerative agriculture practices.
The Good Samaritan Urban Farm is a 1-acre Certified Naturally Grown farm located on the property of The Good Samaritan Health Center in Atlanta's Bankhead neighborhood. The Farm serves to be an innovative healthcare initiative providing locally-grown, fresh produce to patients & community members within The Good Samaritan Health Center. The Farm hosts a daily farm stand to help create access to the patients and community who are on-site for appointments or visiting the campus, who may not otherwise have easy access to affordable, fresh produce.
Seven years ago in SE Atlanta, community members transformed a steep hillside of kudzu and trash into Grant Park Community Garden. Ever since, their members have been growing vegetables for themselves and for others. In support of the Plant a Row for the Hungry Program, half of their cultivated land is reserved for growing organic food to donate to soup kitchens and feeding programs in their community. Last year, they donated 365 pounds of food - a pound a day! They love the personal connection they feel toward each other, their community, the food they grow and the people they donate it to. They cultivate a big assortment of vegetables, blueberry bushes and honey bees. Along with great food, they are about connecting their community with a happy green space and demonstrating the joys of healthy growing practices.
The aim of Greener Roots is to nourish healthy communities by helping to grow innovative local food systems.
Civic Garden Center works with neighborhood residents to create community gardens, providing training and technical support for growing fruits and vegetables to create sustainable projects for the entire Greater Cincinnati region. They try to grow using only organic practices and materials. Each community garden grows various fruit and vegetables ranging from eggplant to corn and everything in between.
Sidestreams Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)3 nonprofit with the mission of building gardens and creating locally grown fresh food projects. Sidestreams works throughout Cincinnati to not only increase fresh food access, but also empower others with tools and knowledge of how to grow their own food.
Taft Garden is a diverse group of passionate Walnut Hills residents growing healthy food, restoring urban soil, beautifying green spaces, and building community. They believe everyone deserves convenient access to fresh and affordable local produce.
The Saint Phocas Garden at Saint Titus Episcopal Church is a partnership with Saint Luke's Episcopal Church for their Good News Garden Program. Their mission is to nurture the earth through good gardening practices; sharing good food from the garden with those in need, and working together toward that Kingdom of God that Jesus so lovingly describes. Through prayer, they reach inside themselves, and through action, they reach out to others in the faith so they can attempt to form a more inclusive and loving community.
The mission of the Samuel Green Sr. Community Garden and the Merrick Moore Community Development Corporation, aka MMCDC, in its diverse community, exists for charitable and educational purposes, to improve the overall quality of life of the poor, underprivileged, and disenfranchised, by strengthening the bonds amongst their residents which include but not limited to providing a forum for the sharing of information, promoting activities/events, fulfilling the community needs and through enhancing the homeowner’s property values. The core values of their organization are community, activism, teamwork, loyalty, respect, and trust.
The Samuel Green Sr. Community Garden will provide a space to address food insecurity and foster a sense of community in the Merrick-Moore Neighborhood.
The San Isidro Labrador Community Garden is run by members of St.Thomas More Catholic Church in Chapel Hill. The garden is intended as both a source of fresh produce for gardeners and parishioners in need and as a demo of what can be produced in a relatively small space using all organic methods. We want to cooperate with nature and each other to create good soil, to generate good food, and to steward the earth.
Simple Gifts Community Garden's mission is to help return to the simple and joyful life which God intended for us. They seek to accomplish this by using the gifts of land, time, talent and resources available to them to produce fresh, organic fruits and vegetables while also building lasting friendships and cooperation within their community. They will also share the knowledge of sustainable organic gardening practices, creation care and planting for pollinators with each other and those in need within their community.
South Estes Community Garden is located in the South Estes/Ridgefield area of Chapel Hill. The garden's mission is to enhance community, promote community engagement, share information about sustainable food production, and provide general education about health and nutrition. Primarily operated by public housing residents and community volunteers, the garden is a great tool to build inclusive community and share knowledge across cultural boundaries.
The proposed St Mark AMEZ Garden is in the heart of the historic Hayti District at 531 Roxboro Road (which is on the corner of South Roxboro Street and the Durham Freeway). Before the early 1980s the area was populated by small homes where almost everyone had a garden. This was a time and era when sharing fruits and vegetables from your garden was the neighborly thing to do. Then a thruway was built through the heart of the predominantly Black community. Now the area has a bludgeoning urban community with all the trappings of an urban environment. This had a monumental environmental and ecological effect that changed the natural balance of nature in food production. This area is basically devoid of flowers and vegetables and the pollination process to support both.
The Cary Tree Archive is an ecosystem restoration. The project will transform seven and a half acres from a derived field of aggressive grass and weeds to a forest populated with native Old Growth species. All planting and maintenance is done by volunteers. It is the most ambitious land-restoration project in the Piedmont.
The Hub Farm’s mission is to improve the academic achievement and health of students in Durham Public Schools through project-based learning in outdoor environments. Supporting this mission, the Hub Farm site includes a food production garden, rain gardens, pollinator gardens, beehives, a floating aquatic lab, a forest ecosystem, ponds, wetland and streams, and robust and diverse community and institutional partnership networks that leverage this physical resource for the academic achievement and health of Durham’s youth.
The Lourdes Bounty Community Garden brings parish and school families together to nurture the land and provide a community activity that educates and enriches relationships with God, and others, while providing fresh, sustainable food to those in need in the parish and broader community.
The Reality Farm is a community farm project that fosters meaningful, creative and productive work for adults with disabilities.
