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 Aflorar Herb Collective is a collective of folk herbalists, herbal enthusiasts, artists, gardeners, and community organizers working to relearn and remember our traditional ways through herbs, connection to the land, and healing through Chicanx, Latinx, Black and Indigenous traditional practices and values. We are working together using nature's tools to guide us on a journey to restore, remember, and reconnect to our shared healing, knowledge, and freedom to liberate our communities.
In this political climate- climate catastrophe, pandemics, racial uprisings, and immigration raids our communities need medicine that reconnects us to the earth, who we are, and where we come from. Aflorar supports communities through herbal community care kit distribution, mutual aid hub (in Asheville, NC), growers network, medicine making, seed saving, and herb plant start giveaway every spring.
In addition to providing healing accompaniment for trauma related to protests, raids, and discrimination, Aflorar partner’s with national and local organizations, clinical herbalists, and farmers to get the goods we need to serve our mission.
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.
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.
The Garden of Joy Culinary Academy was founded by former and current educators who witnessed far too many students succumb to gun violence. This tragic reality inspired them to create a safe space where young people could feel empowered, find purpose, and gain life-changing skills. Located in Cincinnati, the academy provides teenagers and young adults with opportunities to learn culinary arts, develop essential life skills, and receive mentorship in a garden-to-table environment. By combining culinary education with hands-on gardening, they aim to reduce violence, address food insecurity, and foster resilience and self-sufficiency in our community.
Their mission is to empower young people to build brighter futures through education, mentorship, and meaningful, sustainable connections to food and community.
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 Reality Farm is a community farm project that fosters meaningful, creative and productive work for adults with disabilities.
Trees For The Triangle's mission is to improve the aesthetic, economic, and ecological health or the Triangle area through the planting of trees. They focus on planting native trees in Wake, Durham, and Orange counties in North Carolina.
Urban Community AgriNomics' (UCAN) Catawba Trail Farm's mission is to reduce food insecurity, reduce and reverse preventable health issues, increase academic success, and increase exposure to career opportunities in the field of agriculture. UCAN focus is to improve the health and wellbeing of our community by providing education and trainings on healthy lifestyles, seed-to-table food preparation and preservation, hands on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) and organic agriculture. They empower families and individuals with access to resources to grow their own healthy food using sustainable practices, in a supportive environment. They thrive to create an environment where individuals can learn to grow their own food, enjoy the healing effects of access to open green spaces, explore the history of the land, and recognize all who have labored on it through the years. Their work is manifested through a lens of diversity, inclusion, environmental and social justice, and the belief that each of us plays a role in abating and reducing climate change. Healthy People Need a Healthy Earth!
The Urban Ministries of Wake County Garden's mission is to produce as much food as possible for the Urban Ministries Food Pantry.
Our Wake County School Garden Partners currently include Northwoods Elementary School, The Franciscan School, Abbott's Creek Elementary, Green Magnet Elementary School, Kingswood Montessori STEM Magnet Elementary School, Stough Elementary Pollinator & Learning Garden, The Montessori School of Raleigh, North Chatham Elementary School Garden, Joyner Magnet Elementary School, and the Chapel Hill Day Care Center When you share your earned compost with Wake 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!
The Well Fed Community Garden is dedicated to reconnecting folks to the source of their nourishment: plants, chickens & bees, soil, air, water, and friendship. The Well Fed Garden is one example of urban agriculture – 20% of their bounty is provided to their volunteers and neighbors and the remaining 80% is sold to local restaurants and farmers markets. This 1.5-acre plot grows delicious seasonal vegetables, fruits & berries, herbs, mushrooms, and flowers all using organic, no-till methods.
Wolfberry Hawthorn Farm is a Certified Naturally Grown farm which strives to sustainably grow produce for the local community without the use of any chemical pesticides or animal by-products. They also promote the creation of wildlife habitat with our garden consultations, and promotion of native plants. They push the boundaries of what is grown for food in central NC and are always experimenting with produce not normally grown here.
