Trustees Boston Community Gardens hosting 45th Annual Gardeners Gathering, celebrating community, elevating culinary justice
The 45th Annual Gardener’s Gathering takes place March 20-22, with a theme paying homage to the spirit of community and resilience, which continued to flourish last season despite the challenges of COVID-19.
Hosted by the Trustees Boston Community Gardens and the City of Boston, this year’s virtual workshops feature something for all, whether a beginner or skilled gardener, or anyone curious to learn more about urban gardening. Michael W. Twitty, award-winning chef and author of The Cooking Gene, will deliver a keynote presentation on culinary justice, sharing knowledge around crops, and practicing integrated learning across intergenerational linguistic and ethnic spaces.
One Waterfront sat down with Trustees Boston Community Gardens Engagement Manager Michelle de Lima to learn more about this year’s program, and the role that urban gardens can provide in communities, beyond food production.
Q: The Gathering is now in its 45th year! What can gardeners both experienced and beginner take away from this year’s event?
A: Typically, everyone gets together in person to kick off the gardening season at the Gathering, but because of the ongoing pandemic this year will be virtual. Even though it will look a bit different than prior years, it will still be an excellent and engaging resource for gardeners of all levels, and we’re building in some social and networking time on top of the interactive workshops. This year we’ve also added some basic gardeners’ workshops for the many new gardeners we saw grow out of a surge of interest last spring. It’s certainly carrying over to this season as well!
Those beginner workshops will include things like the basics of how to take care of your soil, composting, and seed-saving practical skills—it’s actually getting harder to purchase seeds because of the growth in gardening interest. Then we’ll have a few more advanced workshops, such as how to build your own self watering containers, and how to grow and use medicinal herbs. We’re also pleased to have Shani Fletcher from the City of Boston’s Grassroots program share information on how to start a community garden in Boston, and what resources the City has available.
Photo credit: Whit Wales
Q: Tell us about the theme this year. Who is involved?
A: The theme of the Gathering this year looks at how gardens can be hubs for community organizing, activism, and mutual aid. A wonderful example of this is Eastie Farm, and this year they will present on how they mobilize their site for meal distribution, community resources and advocacy efforts. We’re also excited to have representatives from different community gardening organizations in New York give their perspectives on how people can activate their gardens, not just for growing food and building nearby community, but also channel that into a larger community to build and aid advocacy efforts.
Then we have a few experienced urban and community gardening experts from Boston who will talk about how to do community organizing around a space. We’re also featuring some gardeners who grow culturally important crops, things they grew up eating, and things that are important to their ancestors and community, crops including callaloo, okra, and sweet potatoes.
Q: One of the interactive panel discussions touches on the role of gardens in community resilience. What can you tell us about that?
A: Last season, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were really encouraged to see how places like Eastie Farm and our own community gardens supported their communities either through food or by connecting people to other resources, so we wanted to highlight that. Even when we get through the pandemic it’s a good model of how community resilience can help us get through things together.
We all know gardens provide food and open space, but it’s really interesting to see how they can be used in an even broader sense. When you have a space that is already a community of like-minded people from diverse backgrounds working together, it’s a great place for important issues to get furthered, and that’s powerful. We’re really hoping that this session is useful for people to define what their garden spaces can be used for that would really help their communities, and then strategize with one another about how to make that happen. How to mobilize people, or best leverage their resources and community to evoke broader change. This will be a workshop that is especially interactive, to figure out next steps together.
Q: How did Boston Community gardens adapt last year to a season altered by the pandemic?
A: It was really impressive to see the way people still managed to build community. How this happened varied from garden to garden—some moved their meetings all online and you had people of all ages and backgrounds using Zoom. Others hosted Q&As that often served as a much-missed opportunity for socializing! And though a lot of people already donated produce, many more of the gardens did that last year, putting baskets out for a nice contactless way of sharing and engaging with the community. Gardeners also pitched in and helped maintain plots for those who were higher-risk and couldn’t make it out to the garden in person.
Q: Tell us about this year’s keynote speaker.
A: We’re really fortunate to have Michael W. Twitty joining us this year, a two-time James Beard award winning chef from Washington, D.C. who is also a culinary historian. He is African American and Jewish and draws on both of those aspects of his cultural background to explore the ways that recipes, heirloom crops and food are coevolved with our identities and our history. At the Gathering he is going to talk about gardens as healing spaces, and places to work through the issues of living in a multicultural democracy. He has this idea of culinary justice, and he’s going to talk about sharing the knowledge around our crops, practicing this integrated intergenerational learning in gardens.
Q: What are the community garden awards?
A: These are fun. Every year we award a “Rookie of the Year,” “Most Valuable Gardener,” and “Hall of Fame Garden.” I won’t reveal this year’s winners yet! We’ve had some really wonderful winners in the past—it’s a great opportunity to look at the history of the gardens and the unique story of each garden. And continuing a long tradition of partnership with the City of Boston, the mayor will kick off the Gathering by presenting the awards and giving a keynote address. The MVP award is exciting because it highlights the people who are involved in our community gardens—they’re amazing go-getters who do so much for their communities.
Q: What’s ahead for this year’s gardening season in The Trustees Boston community gardens?
A: One thing we saw last year is that gardens can run and people can do their thing safely even during the pandemic. I think people were really good about doing everything they could to make sure that all the members of the gardening community felt safe in their spaces. Doing things like offering meetings online, letting people mail in their dues, just really adapting.
Though we don’t yet know what this year will look like I think there’s so much less uncertainty at least around the capacity of how to operate in this new normal. We know the gardens can keep producing food and fostering community, without a lot of gathering. To start off with, in the spring and summer we’re planning hybrid programming. We’re really hopeful that by later this summer we might be able to do a little more in person, and maybe the gardens might be able to do some meetings and clean-ups together. Our first priority is to make sure that people can safely get into the gardens and safely continue to grow food. In-person programming would be the icing on the cake if we can do it later in the season.
Q: How can people get involved with the Boston Community Gardens?
A: We hope to see anyone interested in gardening at the Gathering! It’s a great way to meet a very engaged community of people connected around this shared interest. And for anyone curious about getting a garden plot, please go to thetrustees.org/communitygardens and look at the list and map. Then email communitygardens@thetrustees.org and tell us what garden(s) you’re interested in, we’ll be able to get you in touch with the right contact for each location.
Workshop Preview!
"Gardening: A Tool for Cultivating Community"
Explore the history and possibilities of using gardening as a catalyst for community development, political, and socio-economic change. Led by Charissa Zapata-Walker and Joy Gary, the workshop will review the opportunities that exist in Boston and engage how we can move together in next steps.
Charissa Zapata-Walker is an independent Project Manager and Sustainable Designer. She has served as Assistant Manager of Eva’s Garden in South Dartmouth and ReVision Urban Farm in Dorchester and is passionate about bringing an innovative and holistic approach to land design and stewardship. Charissa has spent her career as a leader in multiple sectors and enjoys weaving together the threads of interconnection to create a strong framework for building change.
Joy Gary is the owner of Effloresce Culture & Design, a regenerative design project that seeks to sustain, connect, and equip the community with the food, designs, and skills that encourage resilience. She has dedicated her time to supporting regenerative systems development, food justice, and education through urban ag projects while building gardens for and teaching growing skills to residents in and around the Boston area.