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A Growing Trend

Shared urban gardens are an irresistible extension of the locavore trend, offset the soaring cost of living, and grow both food and a sense of community.

Photography by Reena Bammi

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Unlike the rest of the vernal Ocean State, Providence is not a particularly green or leafy place. Its asphalt gardens, spawned by the ban on overnight street parking, support vehicles, patio furniture, heat shimmers and off odors, but not a lot that provides shade or looks good to eat. In some inner-city neighborhoods, the only green around is on street signs.

For people who like to garden, it’s not the friendliest city. For people who need to grow food to eat, it’s something else again—a place to go hungry.

And there are swelling numbers of those people here.

Fortunately, a surprising number in Rhode Island’s capital city manage small-scale, individual farming. That’s right, farming—if food production for a family can be described that way. We’re talking a micro level here; usually just one person, a few square feet of earth and a water spigot. Oh, and the knowledge and willingness to work the land, no matter how modest a parcel.

It’s made possible by community gardens, increasingly popular options for earth-starved city residents. Various nonprofit groups make small garden beds available to lease by the year at $15 to $25. Importantly, they also guarantee that the soil has been tested for contaminants like lead and made safe for the cultivation of edible plants. Anyone in the community can sign up for one. It was easy to get a plot even a year ago, but most gardens in Providence—and there are at least twenty—now have a wait list.

The biggest organization running them is the Southside Community Land Trust, which has been greening blighted city acres since Brown grad Debbie Schimberg moved to  South Providence in 1981 and realized that the vacant lots and displaced immigrant farmers that filled the low-income neighborhood could come together to create something better. Now, ten gardens allow more than 200 Southside Providence residents to grow food using intensive, organic methods. Their yields feed family members or are sold at the Broad Street, Downcity, Hope and Parade Street farmers’ markets. Market-goers love the fact that the food is grown organically within city limits, organizers say. And the cash is important to growers.

“The median yearly household income around here is $16,500,” says Southside Director Katherine Brown, gesturing at the neighborhood around one garden on Somerset Street. It’s a hot day. Bright green bitter melon and sweet potato vines are starting to grow up makeshift trellises in the block-wide garden. Many of the surrounding houses look well-cared for, and there’s a new city park across the street. It’s a different place from the burned out neighborhood of the 1980s—but there are problems. From a house that backs directly onto the green oasis, the sound of kids and adults shouting spills out. “There’s a drug problem there,” Brown indicates with a nod. “Our gardeners are frightened of them.”

Southside staff work with the kids when they can, she says, but the adults “aren’t interested. If they were, we’d find them a plot in a second.”

No one had to persuade Nhia Lee and Chia Xiong to start growing food after they discovered Southside’s gardens. Both are first-generation immigrants from the hilltop farms of Laos. Like other Hmong people here, they fled their country’s Communist regime after the Vietnam War.