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Pendergrast Farm, a farm conservation community in the Briarcliff Woods neighborhood. (Provided by Pendergrast Farm)
Drive or walk past a newer housing community and you’ll notice a new category of green-minded amenities. These days, more people want sustainability, and housing communities are accommodating this must-have by including energy-efficient appliances, organic landscaping, using recycled and salvaged building materials, and incorporating walkability and access to public transit.
As more eco-conscious communities gain momentum around the country, amenities such as pools and fitness centers just don’t seem to cut it anymore. Some Metro Atlanta apartment complexes and housing communities are going beyond the traditional amenities, building shared garden spaces and even farms into the residential package.
While community gardens aren’t exactly new, the privatization of such an amenity brings fresh context to agrarianism. Rooftop gardens and on-site farms are two types of modern and urban community garden spaces you might find within newer apartment and housing complexes.
Although idealistic in theory, establishing a community garden requires navigating a share of government hang-ups. Even if the plots or bounty are intended for semi-public use, community gardens can only legally exist on private land. Houses of worship and schools sometimes offer private land as a workaround. Take the Leila Valley Community Farm in Southeast Atlanta, for example, which was planted on former housing land that’s currently the property of Valley View Church of God in Christ across the street. Spelman College’s Victory Garden also serves the community and acts as an outdoor classroom for its food studies program, as do community gardens at Emory University and Georgia Tech.
Community-run farms didn’t really exist in Metro Atlanta 30 years ago. That changed in 1998, with the launch of East Lake Commons, a conservation community clustered around historic farmland straddling East Atlanta and Decatur. Each of the 67 properties within the community owns a portion of the fully functioning, organic, five-acre Gaia Gardens farm, which includes a greenhouse, two high tunnels, a pond, a complete irrigation system, tractors, a blueberry orchard, and a community garden plot for East Lake Commons residents.
Related Story: Brookhaven residents grow into new community garden
An aerial view of Gaia Gardens at East Lake Commons. (Provided by East Lake Commons/Gaia Gardens)
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Five years later, the community took over supervising and running Gaia Gardens. But the community doesn’t manage the day-to-day farm operations. The East Lake Commons Property Owners Association (POA) leases the land to a farmer or pair of farmers for $1 a year. The POA is currently on its sixth contract, in exchange for a community supported agriculture (CSA) program.
The CSA model ensures farmer compensation no matter how the growing season turns out. Without this structure, a farmer could go under in a handful of years. Any surplus produce can be sold at farmers markets or via a tent on the property itself, providing added income to the farmer(s). In addition to financial security, Gaia Gardens’ farmers reap irreplaceable industry knowledge that sustains their subsequent projects.
Notable Gaia Gardens alumni include Daniel Parson, farmer and educator at Emory’s Oxford College Organic Farm, and Joe Reynolds and Judith Winfrey, founders of Love is Love Cooperative Farm in Mansfield.
“It’s been a great training ground for people to either learn farming or upgrade their farming skills and have a minimal capital investment,” said Karen Minvielle, East Lake Commons resident and 25-year garden committee member. “We’re only a three-minute drive from downtown Atlanta. A lot of places don’t know we exist.”
A generation later, Gaia Gardens’ impact on Atlanta is undeniable. Farmers markets flourish throughout the metro area, and organic produce has proliferated, increasing physical and financial access to healthy food. More Atlantans prioritize local agriculture and sustainability, and private living communities and apartment complexes have taken notice, incorporating those values into key community amenities.
Related Story: Atlanta turns to the soil to tackle food insecurity
Via Signal House/Instagram.
Ponce City Market’s Signal House on the Eastside Beltline transformed extra rooftop space into a garden that residents are welcome to use. Signal House residents have the option to join a free garden club, and the property managers use resident feedback to determine which crops to grow. In addition to unobstructed sunlight, the rooftop garden at Signal House also benefits from its location, where pests such as deer, squirrels, and rabbits cannot access.
Lisa Fisher, who moved to Signal House last November, is an enthusiastic member of the garden club. Although convenience and proximity to her workplace were her primary draws to Signal House, Fisher can’t deny the appeal of the rooftop garden in her decision to move there, especially since maintenance of it is shared. Fisher may have had the space for a garden at her house in the suburbs, but she said she lacked the time necessary to maintain it.
Pendergrast Farm, a recently constructed farm and conservation community in Briarcliff Woods, takes a slightly different approach. Along with Serenbe, 30 miles south of Atlanta, Pendergrast is one of two farm conservation communities in Georgia. (East Lake Commons, rather, is a co-housing community that holds sustainability as one of its founding tenets.)
“The whole idea behind a conservation community is to build new houses, to build a community, but to do it in such a way that we preserve as much of the natural environment as possible,” said Candace Fuqua, broker and owner at Avenue Realty Metro in Decatur.
Built on family land, 20 energy-efficient houses are grouped together, void of large lawns in exchange for a one-acre working organic farm, 5.5 acres of undeveloped woodland space, and a half-mile walking trail. Additional eco-conscious amenities include a saltwater pool, shared lawn space, and community center with room to house overnight guests. Developers Dennis McConnell (Healthy House of Georgia) and Greg Ramsey (Village Habitat Design) also considered the farm plot’s economic sustainability.
“The business problem is that no one can make money on a farm,” McConnell said, who is also a Pendergrast Farm resident. “You don’t see any rich farmers unless they’re big industrial, combine kinds of things.”
Pendergrast’s solution was to create a financially sustainable farming position through a CSA program. The community hired farmer Vincent McKoy, a HABESHA Works Program graduate with more than six years of experience. McKoy, who specializes in sustainable agriculture and has worked for Eco-Paradigm, leases the farmland and has the option to live in an adjacent apartment space currently under construction.
But new eco-friendly developments don’t come cheap. Pendergrast homes are all ADA-accessible, range from 2,600 to 4,000 square feet, and start at $1.1 million. Rent for a one-bedroom apartment at Signal House starts at $2,411, while a two bedroom apartment starts at $3,140.
Meanwhile, a three-bedroom, two-bath home at East Lake Commons, which includes a portion of Gaia Gardens, is just shy of $390,000.
However, these sustainability initiatives may be the very feature that first attracted residents to such communities. Minvielle said that East Lake Commons’ sustainability initiatives appealed to many residents, including her own family, before deciding to buy a home there.
“We had this fabulous resource right in our backyard,” she said. “My [daughters] grew up knowing where carrots are grown. They just don’t appear in the grocery store in a plastic bag.”
Related Story: Renovated Wylde Center gardens reopen in Oakhurst
Aerial shot overlooking Gaia Gardens and East Lake Commons toward Glenwood Avenue. (Provided by East Lake Commons/Gaia Gardens)
Gaia Gardens farmer Stephanie Simmons at the beginning of this year’s carrot harvest. (Provided by East Lake Commons/Gaia Gardens)
Pendergrast resident, Ming Han Chung, co-owner of Minhwa Spirits in Doraville, agrees with Minvielle. The farm and conservation efforts offered as part of the Pendergrast residential package appealed to Chung and his family.
“[Vincent McKoy’s] CSA isn’t cheap, but we all want it to succeed,” said Chung. “We all bought into this neighborhood with that being part of it.”
Chung and McConnell add that Pendergrast is full of chefs and food lovers. One resident, for instance, is a Thai chef who frequently makes and gifts mango sticky rice to her neighbors. “We all get random food all the time,” Chung said.
Over at East Lake Commons, Minvielle cites a number of “work party” opportunities that allow residents to gather and get involved with the garden. Events range from chores like mulching tomatoes to larger group operations, including installing the irrigation system at Gaia Gardens.
“We’ve had farm dinners that some of the farmers hosted using locally grown produce, in addition to their own produce, bringing in a local chef, setting up long tables around the farm and serving a literal farm-to-table meal right there,” Minvielle said of some of the other community events at Gaia Gardens.
More than a year into Pendergrast Farm’s existence, McKoy is still testing the land’s terrain, calling farming “a series of trials and errors.” One segment houses a potential fig orchard centered around an archway encouraging miniature watermelon vines. Kale grows in tandem with bug-deterring herbs, an organic alternative to pesticides.
“It’s been great to see the evolution of the farm and locally grown, organic produce as a whole in metro area,” Minvielle said of Gaia Gardens and living in East Lake Commons. “Sustainability and healthy, organic food have become much more popular than [they were] 30 years ago.”
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