Cleveland Clinic Children’s Akron garden teaches kids, feeds community
Cleveland Clinic Children’s at Akron General, 676 S. Broadway St. in Akron, is home to a new community garden. And anyone can get food from it.
At Cleveland Clinic Children’s new garden at 676 S. Broadway St. in Akron, patients and community members pick and eat fruits and vegetables and learn about gardening.Patients have learned more about the role that fruits and vegetables play in nutrition by seeing the plants up close with medical professionals and sometimes gardening themselves.The produce is free to everyone, and anyone who harvests it doesn’t have to be supervised by or confer with a Cleveland Clinic Children’s representative.
When Dr. Maureen Ahmann decided to plant a community garden outside of Cleveland Clinic Children’s Broadway Street location in Akron, she had no idea what it was going to turn into.
Ahmann, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Cleveland Clinic Children’s at Akron General, said the plan was to teach children about nutrition.
Over the past roughly five to seven years, Ahmann said she found that most of her patients don’t eat any vegetables. What’s more, many parents told her they can’t afford fruits and vegetables, as they are often more expensive than processed foods.
“Instead of me saying, ‘I really recommend to have your plate be veggies,’ and knowing that they may not be able to get that, I have this option where at the end of the visit, we just walk right outside and the kids see the vegetables and they can pick them,” she said.
In May, Anthony Doolittle Jr., then 10 years old, caught Ahmann planting beans outside of Cleveland Clinic’s 676 S. Broadway St. offices before his appointment. They had the appointment, as Ahmann and Anthony’s mother, Chris Doolittle, told the story, then Anthony helped Ahmann plant the beans.
That sparked an idea in Ahmann. Now, not only does she teach children who are patients of the hospital about nutrition by encouraging them to pick and eat fruits and vegetables from the garden, but she and some of her colleagues educate interested kids about gardening and how plants grow.
“Then it does turn into these little science lessons,” Ahmann said. “And Anthony’s the one that taught me that because when he asked to help plant the beans and then he was asking what the roots were … and we talked about it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is so much bigger than what I thought it was going to be.'”
Doolittle, of Brunswick Hills, estimates that she’s taken Anthony, who is now 11, to the garden five or six times since May — to pick corn, carrots, green beans, wax beans, yellow squash, zucchini, lettuce, tomatoes, basil and more.
On a trip to the garden on a Sunny day in August, Ahmann joined Anthony to harvest.
“What do you see there?” she asked. “Anthony, what is that?”
“Watermelon!” he exclaimed. “Is it ready?”
“I think it is!” she said.
He twisted the watermelon off the vine and plopped it in a bucket to take home.
Cleveland Clinic Children’s Akron garden a learning experience for kids
Anthony is one of Ahmann’s patients who used to visit her for appointments in Brunswick, then came to see her at the Broadway Street location in Akron after she relocated there. The Broadway Street facility opened in September 2024.
Aria Rodgers, 11, and Elijah Rodgers, 8, of Brunswick, are two more of Ahmann’s patients who did the same.
“I wanted to go back to her for the kids’ pediatrician because — I don’t know — she’s just amazing,” their mother, Crystal Rodgers, said. “I ended up making my son’s appointment for his well check in July. And when we came out here, she was actually in the parking lot, and she’s like, ‘Eli!’ And she’s like, ‘Did you see the garden?’ And I’m like, ‘Who is talking?’ And I turned around, and it was her. And the kids were in the garden forever.”
Ahmann said harvesting is like a scavenger hunt for the children.
On an August scavenger hunt, Aria and Elijah picked carrots, corn, cucumbers, zucchini and tomatoes.
Elijah picked a carrot from the garden and cleaned it inside the medical building, then walked back to the garden with the carrot in his mouth and the leafy top hanging out.
“Eli — he will eat pretty much anything,” Rodgers said. “Aria — she loves carrots and cucumbers without the skin. And they’ll eat pretty much any type of fruit.”
Doolittle said homegrown carrots are new for Anthony.
One girl hadn’t had tomatoes before but tried a sweet cherry tomato from the garden after a little encouragement from her mother, Ahmann said.
“Then she took a bite,” Ahmann said. “And then she had a big smile and popped it in her mouth.”
Multiple studies show that children and teenagers eat more fruits and vegetables when they participate in gardening, Ahmann said.
Doolittle said she has a bucket garden with tomatoes and peppers at home, and Rodgers said Elijah wants to start a garden at home next summer.
Anthony said his favorite vegetable or fruit to eat is corn on the cob.
He said Ahmann taught him about blossom rot and preventing it by adding crushed eggshells to the soil. He also said she taught him about how planting flowers in the garden attracts bees.
Produce is free to visitors of co-located pantry, everyone in community
Anyone can pick fruits and vegetables from the community garden at any time, Ahmann said, adding that they don’t have to pay or be chaperoned by anyone at Cleveland Clinic.
Ahmann said her 21-year-old son was helping her in the garden a few weeks ago.
“He was like, ‘Mom, aren’t you afraid people are going to steal food?'” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘No, that’s the whole point of it. There is no stealing of the food. It’s for the community, whether it’s patients or not, whoever needs it in the community.’ In fact, I hope people come and take the food. The only thing I would hope that doesn’t happen is people just vandalize it or something like that.”
Cleveland Clinic has a food pantry in the Women’s Health Center at the Broadway Street building.
The food pantry, offered in partnership with the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank, does not source produce from the garden, Ahmann said. However, she said people who use the food pantry can learn about the garden and vice versa.
“We had potatoes one day in the food pantry, so what we did is we cut rosemary up and we gave them a recommendation, like, ‘If you roast these potatoes, you can roast the rosemary with it. It adds a nice flavor,’ that kind of thing, just to give some more options to explore food in different ways,” Ahmann said. “A lot of people don’t just know to experiment with going to buy rosemary and put that on there. But if someone’s handing you rosemary to do it, then they try it.”
Patrick Williams covers growth and development for the Akron Beacon Journal. He can be reached by email at pwilliams@gannett.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @pwilliamsOH. Sign up for the Beacon Journal’s business and consumer newsletter, “What’s The Deal?”
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