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.
Tucked into Freedom Park, the Poncey-Highland Community Garden was established in 2008. It includes over 30 raised beds and almost 10 community beds, sown with a mix of berries and insectary plants. We hope to improve Freedom Park visually and botanically for our neighbors and community members!
Refarm Atlanta aims to make fresh local flowers accessible to our community and sustainable for our environment through sustainable agricultural practices and refound knowledge from growers before us.
Roots Down creates better landscapes in our communities that promote green job growth, ecological restoration, and community well-being. They're building a world where every person has access to fresh food and thriving ecosystems that feed our soils and people. Thank you for joining them and the movement to feed people while fighting climate change!
The goal of the Sustaining Attention to God's Earth (hereafter SAGE) Garden is to help Columbia Theological Seminary move toward becoming a more environmentally sustainable community.
Trellis Horticultural Therapy Alliance uses the power of plants and gardening to improve the quality of life for people living with physical, cognitive and mental health challenges. Those they serve include those in recovery from brain and spinal cord injury, stroke survivors, the incarcerated, and elders. The Ability Garden at Callanwolde is a fully wheelchair accessible garden and greenhouse that offers supported therapeutic gardening programs for adults and youth. The Ability Garden and its programs strive to provide horticultural activities with purpose while fostering independence, improving self-confidence and rebuilding social connections. Groups that depend on the Ability Garden include special education students from Atlanta’s Inman and David T. Howard middle schools, Emory Stroke Survivor’s Support Group, the Ruby D. Neeson Diabetes Foundation, and past patients from the Shepherd Center.
Threshold Community Program is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the social, emotional and educational growth of neurodivergent individuals and their families within a therapeutic learning environment.
The Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture is committed to bringing good food, good health, and well-being to Atlanta’s urban community. Feeding people right where they live is their mission. Their guiding principles are to emulate nature in the production of food, to educate old and young to grow their own food and to create a welcoming space where people can gather and find harmony with the earth.
Unearthing Farm and Market is a nonprofit initiative working to provide equitable access to fresh, locally-grown produce in the Edgewood and Kirkwood neighborhoods.
They work in partnership with community members to center the needs of legacy residents, families with children, seniors, and other folks in the community with typically low access to fresh food.
Not only do they aim to provide affordable locally-grown produce through Unearthing Farm and Market, they partner with other local food entrepreneurs and businesses to cultivate an equitable hyper-local food system and provide opportunities for education for children and families around healthy food preparation.
Wild Combination Organic Farm is a small diversified vegetable and herb farm in Atlanta, Georgia devoted to a composite framework binding food autonomy, environmental regeneration, land stewardship and shared access to resources for healthy community. They want to reactivate dormant inner connectivity between human bodies, minds, and their place among plants, animals and earth, while reimagining work and labor as a collective, egoless fount of purpose and the thing of life itself. Founder Valentina got their start and love for farming as a full-time crew member at Aluma Farm and never looked back. They love smallness, depth, and balance, and a life lived outdoors!
Wylde Center connects people to nature through environmental education and urban greenspaces. They accomplish this through educational programs, events and five greenspaces that engage metro-Atlanta youth, families and individuals in their environment, health and community, and that develop skills in environmental science, sustainable urban living, organic gardening, health, and nutrition.
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 Duke Campus Farm is a one-acre, working farm that provides sustainably grown produce and food systems education for Duke and its surrounding communities. In collaboration with their undergraduate and graduate student farm crew, academic courses and research, they grow and harvest for Duke’s food purveyors and their Community Supported Agriculture program. More important than the thousands of pounds of food they grow, however, are the opportunities the farm provides for engaging and reimagining the ways we cultivate, access, value, and think about food.
Our Durham County School Garden Partners are currently The Lerner School, Glenn Elementary School, Eno Valley Elementary, C. E. Jordan High School Greenhouse & Garden, Bethesda Elementary School, Lyons Farm Elementary School, Oak Grove Elementary, R.N. Harris Elementary School, Sandy Ridge Elementary School, Hillandale Elementary School, Eastway Elementary School, Durham School of the Arts, W.G. Pearson Magnet Elementary School, E.K. Powe Elementary School, Hope Creek Gardens for Neurodiverse Students, Northern High School, Lucas Middle School, and EK Powe Elementary School. When you share your earned compost with Durham County Schools, the 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!
Eno River Garden on Rivermont uses sustainable, regenerative farming practices to grow delicious food and sustain diverse wildlife on 1 acre near the Eno River. They prioritize native plantings to sustain bee, bird and butterfly populations. They also teach permaculture and no-dig gardening methods, provide garden consultation, and share food and flowers with neighbors and CSA members.
The Epworth UMC Pollinator Garden provides habitat, beauty, and opportunities for hands-on service as part of our commitment to caring for God's creation.
Feed Durham is a mutual aid collective and community love project based in Durham, NC. This year they are disrupting root causes of hunger, and distributing their organizing blueprints to sustain hundreds of thousands of people across the South. They're distributing groceries to folks, installing raised garden beds for families, developing a food demo and plant medicine web series, hosting outdoor photo shoots for unhoused folks that will allow them to walk away with framed or laminated photos of themselves/their families, and working with community to connect their neighbors with essential resources.
Food Bank CENC Community and Demonstration Garden's mission is to nourish people, build solutions, and empower communities.
Food For Thought Food is a new exhibit garden that highlights how to grow fruits and veggies in a sustainable way that works with native habitats to support the community and pollinators and other native wildlife.
Fresh Harvest Garden is committed to improving community engagement, investing in the community and the health of residents, sidewalks, better parks, and traffic safety. Fresh Harvest Garden develops partnerships with city and county government, including law enforcement, and engages in community outreach for youth and adults through community events and educational opportunities. Additionally, they network with the community to leverage community service and resources such as home repairs and housing for fixed and low-income families and sustain a community garden for residents to be able to eat healthy organic fruits and vegetables.
