Portland’s 11 community gardens offer inexpensive plots and tools for growers to use, and they prioritize low-income residents.
PORTLAND, Maine — Even in a Certified Tree City like Portland, green spaces are a precious thing.
Next to Franklin Street, one of the busiest corridors in the city, a plot of land on Boyd Street has been the center of a gardening haven for 20 years.
Once an abandoned lot, the nonprofit Cultivating Community took it over and converted it into an urban farm in 2004.
The organization educated elementary school kids, provides food for farmers markets, and oversees 11 public gardens spread out around the city. All are welcome to reserve a plot and grow anything they want.
Many who use these spaces identify as low-income, and the nonprofit caters to them. Self-identifying low-income growers pay as little as $15 a year for a plot. They get tips from experts and have access to tools, water, and even seeds.
Silvan Shawe is Cultivating Community’s executive director. She said many of the 485 people enrolled in the program live near their plots. They can walk outside their apartments and quickly pick fresh produce for their next meal.
“Working in food systems is a really incredible thing,” Shawe said while standing in the middle of the Boyd Street garden. “Because it really brings together so much of both real challenges—whether that’s food security, climate resilience—and provides a really joyful solution.”
There are other challenges facing the program itself.
The Trump administration announced this year that it would make significant cuts to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and end two programs that provided food from local farms to food banks and schools. The USDA’s Local Food Purchasing Assistance Program, one of the institutions on the chopping block, funds initiatives that distribute food to more than 200 Maine hunger relief organizations.
In response, Cultivating Community joined other local nonprofits to form their own distribution network, Farm to Neighbor, aimed at connecting farmers with vulnerable residents.
“Our programs and our mission focus on people who are most likely to experience hunger, whether that’s new immigrant families, youth, older adults, people of color,” Shawe explained. “Any neighbor is welcome to be a part of this community, and we work really hard to make them as accessible as possible.”
While Shawe and other leadership spend time on policy, they have help in the garden.
Luke Jenkins just started his senior year at the University of New England after spending the summer with Cultivating Community as a sustainability fellow. It is a blue-collar internship. As I followed Shawe and Jenkins around Boyd Street, he would occasionally stop to uproot weeds.
He came into the internship confident he would strengthen his biological science major, but his passion for food systems had grown beyond that.
“After working here this summer, I kind of want to focus more on food security, working in urban environments,” Jenkins explained while leaning on a wooden compost collection system he built. “How can we bring conservation not just from rural areas but down back into the urban cities.”
Luke’s professor, Cameron Wake, stood in the garden, proud of his student.
“We interviewed a number of different students for this position, and Luke really shone through,” Wake smiled. “Both in his interest in botany and his background, but also his interest in trying to make the world a better place in some way.”
Shawe had already hired Jenkins to continue helping after his studies.
After all, there would be plenty of growing, composting, and weeding to do before and after the impending harsh Maine winter.
Comments are closed.