Community Gardens will help green and build community. These Gardens will provide a local food
source for those in need and will empower a future generation with the important knowledge of sustainability and our connection with the Earth and with the community.

Community gardens are productive and attractive green spaces that improve the community environment and make it more attractive to residents, homeowners and businesses. Neighborhoods can grow around gardens. Gardens and other green spaces are crucial to the health of cities and to people's perception of their quality of life. Gardening promotes physical fitness for adults and provides alternatives to crime among youths. They provide a place for youths and adults to be in contact with nature and to "own a little bit of the land." Community gardens build community spirit by providing people of different ages, incomes and cultures a common goal. And, gardens are a practical approach to reclaiming vacant lots that will encourage people and businesses to move back into neighborhoods. It's more than fresh vegetables! Community Gardening cultivates leadership skills, self-esteem, neighborhood pride and community spirit.

Community gardening is also something low-income people can do right now to improve their neighborhoods and their own lives. They provide an alternative for people to simultaneously improve food security and their participation in local food systems. For low-income families, gardens are a potential source of fresh, nutritious produce at relatively low cost. Gardens also provide a focal point for people to come together in community and build neighborhood relationships at a time when disappearing resources put a strain on low-income families.
Community gardening is a proactive way to achieve environmental, economic and cultural justice!

Community Gardening is a grass-roots effort that:
• provides a catalyst for neighborhood and community development
• stimulates social interaction
• encourages self-reliance
• beautifies neighborhoods
• produces nutritious food
• stretches food budgets
• conserves resources
• provide entrepreneurial opportunities, such as selling herbs, vegetables and flowers in farmer’s markets
• creates opportunities for exercise, therapy, education and friendship

Orange Mound Community Garden

The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, Neighborhood Covenant of Orange Mound, Melrose Preservation Association, and Gardens of EDEN have joined together for a pilot garden at 803 Hamilton St. Volunteers and coordinators are needed. Come help be a part of this great opportunity.

Why have a Community Garden in Orange Mound?

We believe that globalization should benefit the
people and come from a grassroots level, but it does not seem to be happening that way. As we encourage the community to pursue globalization for the people, they want to know what we can do. We suggest that they live simply and democratically and that they become proactive consumers, better yet, that they become proactive people. Part of being a proactive consumer is to realize where your purchases come from and whom they benefit or hurt. A proactive person acts for the good of the community and the planet. One way to achieve this proactive level and to live simply and democratically is through community gardening.

We approached the Orange Mound Neighborhood Covenant Cultural Enrichment program with the same message and invited them to become the first urban community garden in Memphis. They gladly accepted and agreed to being the pilot project to establish community garden throughout Memphis and the Mid-South. At the same time, we arranged to host a Farmer's Market at the First Congregational Church in Mid-Town, where we are housed, near Orange Mound. The Farmer's Market, as well as the Community Garden(s) will build and green community and offer an alternative to corporate globalization.

What exactly is the Orange Mound Community Garden?

The Orange Mound Community Garden will provide youth in the Orange Mound Community an opportunity and outlet to learn about gardening and to improve their social and academic skills. The Orange Mound area is a lower-income African-American neighborhood with low academic reading scores for youth in national and state testing. Historically, it is a strong, culturally rich and thriving area where in the last century the Deadrick Plantation that had over 1,000 slaves was located. After the abolition of slavery, the Deadrick slaves established their new lives in the neighborhood now known as Orange Mound. Many of the present residents descend from these first residents. However, these descendants still suffer from the effects of slavery and discrimination, as evidenced by their low reading scores and their lower income levels than the rest of the Memphis population.

The Orange Mound Community Youth Garden will help green and build community. An organic garden will empower a future generation with the important knowledge of sustainability and our connection with the Earth and with the community. The program will also build and enhance the youth's reading skills by incorporating reading, service and math into the program. For instance, they will deliver flowers and produce to the elderly in neighborhood.

Urban gardening is a proactive way to achieve environmental, economic and cultural justice!

Lead and the Orange Mound Community

Environmental racism is a serious problem facing many urban, low-income, minority communities. The Orange Mound community in Memphis, TN, is a predominantly African-American community, with about 11,700 of the 14,800 people (www.census.gov, 1990 data) in the community of African-American heritage. This community fits the criteria for environmental racism, specifically regarding community wide levels of lead.

The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, as part of its human rights framework, feels that environmental justice is a human right and wants to integrate lead advocacy into the actions we take as a grassroots, community-oriented non-profit organization. Advocacy, research, and education are synonymous with our ideology and also represent what needs to be done regarding lead awareness in the Orange Mound community. We planned to teach community members about lead hazards, symptoms of lead poisoning, and general information about environmental justice issues, but this training was going to come after we had established our garden. However, once we discovered that there was lead in the youth community garden we began to think about the community wide implications of high lead levels in the community, in people's homes, and in children's play areas. We realized that although information exists about lead and lead poisoning, this information is potentially not easily accessible to all community members. It is also possible that community members may know where and how to find information on lead and lead poisoning, but may not realize that they are indeed at risk and should be concerned about it. We feel that it is our implicit responsibility to provide the Orange Mound community with factual, easily accessible information on lead and its hazards: research; to raise awareness about lead and its hazards in the community: education; and, to represent a voice and an outlet for expression for the community regarding lead issues: advocacy.

Lead found in Orange Mound Youth Community Garden
by Jessica Skyfield

The Mid-South Peace and Justice Center realized that a soil test for lead in the Orange Mound Youth Community Garden was necessary before actual gardening began since lead can damage children under six's central nervous system and development. Lead is a heavy metal that can be found in the paint of old homes, leaded gasoline, in car batteries, and in other possible sources.

A and L Laboratories tested soil from the garden plot for lead in February. When the results came back in late March, the soil tested at 70-300 lead parts per million (ppm). The Environmental Protection Agency recommends that children not be exposed to leaded soil above 400 ppm, but A&L Laboratories told the Peace and Justice Center that lead soil levels above 10 ppm can be dangerous.

While there is obviously conflicting information about acceptable lead levels in soil, the fact that the soil at the Josephine garden plot is near the threshold level alludes to the need for caution in proceeding with the garden.

The Orange Mound Youth Community Garden on Josephine is delayed until more information about lead can be obtained. The Peace and Justice Center and the Orange Mound Covenant Neighborhood Cultural Enrichment Program are in the process of testing other lots in the area for their soil lead levels. Once these results come in, the Center will know more about how they are going to proceed.

The lot on Josephine will either proceed as a garden plot or something will be done to remediate the levels of lead in the soil.

While the Peace and Justice Center is waiting, they want to advocate for and educate the community about lead and its hazards. As the first step in the education and advocacy campaign, the Center urges that children under six be tested for blood lead levels.

Since the soil in and around the Orange Mound area has slightly high levels of lead, it is worth getting your children tested for this reason alone. Add to this the fact that many of the homes in Orange Mound are older and thus may have lead-based paint in them, having your children tested is imperative.

Lead poisoning can cause loss of hearing, lower IQs, delayed mental development, poor attention span, and speech and language handicaps, especially in developing children under the age of six. Lead poisoning can result in headaches and stomachaches in your child, but it can also have no symptoms. Please, have your family physician test your children for blood lead levels or attend a testing by the Health Department.

Interested in Starting a Community Garden in Your Neighborhood?

The Center has the resources and will assist in organizing, planning, development and funding. Just contact us for more details.

As always the Center needs your help on this project. If you could donate your time or any garden supplies ( seeds, compost, tools....etc.) please contact the Center.