The Role of Community Gardens
By Rena Wetzel-Curtis, Wisteria Magazine
Sunflowers climbing towards the street lights, carrots and potatoes deep in the soil, fresh flowers and herbs peeking out from the raised beds, community members coming and going, taking what they need and leaving the rest for others, a community garden. Community gardens have been popping up more and more often, specifically in St. Paul and Minneapolis. At Geroge Floyd Square, the ever-growing global memorial for Geroge Floyd, a greenhouse, complete with a sitting area among the plants, houses fruits and vegetables available to the caretakers and community at the square. When Minneapolis began dismantling George Floyd Square after assuming justice was served along with the verdict announcement, city officials tore the flower bed barricades protecting the memorial apart. On June 3, 2021, state troopers murdered Winston Smith, a 32-year-old musician, comedian, and inspiration, on the same intersection where, only ten days later, a white supremacist murdered Deona Marie. Marie was about to turn 31 and celebrate her sobriety anniversary. Protesters began planting as a form of protest, and soon after, the Wince-Marie peace garden was born. However, unknown companies, law enforcement, and the city have uprooted the gardens and disrupted peace on multiple occasions.
This terror raises one crucial question: why are city officials intent on destroying these beacons of peace?
Gardens have always been a tangible example of growth and community aid. From church gardens to farms owned by Black land stewards, gardens represent the ability to rely on the community when the systems already in place do not serve the majority. America's design systemically benefits white people - and white people only. Replacing the need for those systems with mutual aid, redistribution of wealth, and community food support is a step forward in dismantling murderous systems. Not only do gardens provide produce and flowers, but they also provide a safe space to connect with the Earth and, for some Black and Indigenous people, a space to reconnect to land ridden with trauma. The mental health and generational trauma of Black and Indigenous folks, especially Black and Indigenous women, has never been a priority to this country. According to the University of Minnesota, interacting with nature improves mental health and can provide safe healing spaces.
Black families face hunger and malnutrition at twice the rate as their white counterparts, while Indigenous peoples' low food access results in diabetes, a partial cause of the alarming 20-year drop in life expectancy. Community gardens are slowly filling those gaps and providing nutritional food for Black and Brown families. Before colonization, Indigenous communities upheld abundant farms and gardens to feed their families and provide medicine from their traditional sources. For centuries now, the government has pushed Indigenous communities onto reservations and experience food insecurity, their water sources built over on treaty land.
Community gardens serve as anti-racist work against environmental racism. Gardens drastically improve soil and air quality, increase the biodiversity of plants and animals, reduce neighborhood waste through composting, and positively impact urban microclimate. The climate crisis will hit hardest on Black, Brown, and Indigenous people who lack the generational wealth of white Americans. Local gardening cuts down the carbon footprint by limiting the need for cross-country and international shipping. The climate crisis stretches beyond the realms of community gardens. Real, immediate, and equitable change must occur to preserve Earth and its inhabitants. It means protecting Black and brown childhoods, Indigenous sovereign land, preserving native tongue globally by protecting native elders, and working towards liberation by any means necessary.
