Now that our garden is thriving, we turn our thoughts to our future. It’s time for brainstorming to take the center stage, and we ask all of our volunteers, community partners, and neighbors to help shape our garden to function in a way that benefits the most people in our greater community.

Imagine our inner city neighborhood filled not with vacant lots but with gardens tended by graduates of an urban farming training program. These mostly young people, who are gifted a vacant lot and seed money upon completing classes, might sell their produce at a farmers market, or to neighbors, or to a non-profit grocery store in our neighborhood which sells not only the freshest most local of produce, but also staples at cost.

Imagine our outdoor classroom with weekly or daily classes on a variety of topics related to health, self-care, diy arts, and community.

Imaging walking by a fully mature prairie, with bird song like you’ve never heard while you watch the bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds fill the place with life. You pull a ripe Asian pear from a tree and crunch with delight.

Imagine visiting an on-site demonstration garden to figure out which no-mow grass or low ground cover is right for you as you transform your lawn to something more ecologically beneficial.

Imagine walking with your kids through a sensory garden, where there is art and the beauty of nature to see, fragrant flowers to smell, fuzzy plants and art to touch, and of course, strawberries and raspberries to eat. Hear the gentle bells of chimes?

Imagine our garden being a refuge for kids in our neighborhood with summer programming filling their days. When they become teens they apply to our apprenticeship program, earning money locally while doing wonderful things for our community. The ability to learn soft skills and earn money helps give them a sense of purpose and a head start on adult life.

Everything that is currently in our garden is the result of dreaming a vision that brings together community and fresh produce, and that seeks to support our natural habitat as we cross the unknown terrain that climate change brings into what comes next. Our dreaming is endless as we transform our neighborhood from food deserts to gardens, from urban decay to thriving community.

We extend this invitation to you–yes, you! With enough caring hearts and helping hands–and funding!–together we can enact and make real this future that is inside of us, the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

It’s time for us all to ask questions like, how do we better integrate ourselves within our neighborhood and greater community? In what ways can we help our neighbors learn the skills to grow their own food? How do we further nurture our garden as a place, a nexus of community? How do we create and strengthen resilient communities now, before we welcome the stream of climate refugees to join us?

This is an ongoing conversation, and we invite you to take part.