VSU’s Urban Agriculture Experts Help Develop Eden’s Garden
This small garden produces big benefits, reducing Chesapeake Bay pollution, addressing community food disparity and health issues, and reducing a church’s city storm-water bills.
A church is usually the place where people come throughout the week to feed their mind, body and spirit. With the help of Virginia State University’s Cooperative Extension (VSU-VCE) and Small Farm Outreach Program (SFOP), Second Baptist Church (SBC) took that a notion a step further by creating their own urban garden on their church grounds, helping to address food insecurities within their community as well as educating and providing them with healthy, nutritious food.
Initially, Richmond-based Second Baptist Church (SBC) was looking for a solution to an issue that had nothing to do with agriculture. The church has a huge roof area that results in a large amount of water runoff and hefty annual bills from the city for stormwater control. To resolve the problem, SBC partnered with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to install a 10,000-gallon cistern to collect the rainwater and reduce pollution to the nearby James River. With one problem solved, the solution to one problem resulted in another: what would the church do with 10,000 gallons of rainwater? Dr. Leonard Githinji, associate professor and extension specialist for the VSU Sustainable & Urban Agriculture Program, had a solution: start an urban garden.
The idea resonated with SBC. Urban gardens have been sprouting up throughout the city for years, and an urban garden provided the church with educational and outreach opportunities. Githinji connected SBC with Extension’s Small Farm Outreach Program (SFOP) at VSU. SFOP was able to provide technical and agricultural advice to the church as they explored this endeavor. In 2016, SBC added Eden’s Garden to the city’s landscape.
“We realized that the best way to have an urban garden in their space was to build raised beds, so we brought in volunteers to help construct the beds,” says Githinji. “Since the church did not have a greenhouse or a space to start their seedlings, VSU provided that space. VSU Extension also helped the church develop a planning calendar and provided training on all aspects of production for their new garden.”
Members of the community and church have enjoyed fresh, nutritious produce from Eden’s Garden, including snow peas, mustard greens, basil, tomatoes and much more—a huge leap from their start with broccoli and cauliflower seven years prior. Though the garden is sustained by church members and volunteers, SFOP still provides technical advice when needed.
At the same time, a nearby Hispanic community heard what SFOP was able to do with Eden’s Garden and contacted VSU to do the same for them. Later, the principal of a local public elementary school asked SFOP to help them start a garden for their students.
“We are always thinking about the future generation,” Githinji began. “When you have a child who is five or six-years old learning the basics of agriculture, that’s a game changer because many of them have never really seen how their food grows. It’s this connection to the food system process that changes their mindset.”
SFOP, in connection with Virginia Cooperative Extension at VSU, provides training, seminars, advice and support to small-scale, historically underserved farmers and ranchers in rural, urban and suburban Virginia, and parts of Maryland and North Carolina.
“We want the community to know that we are here to help. We are just a phone call or email away. We want to see multiplication,” says Githinji. “Imagine with one project how many people it can impact? If we can train various members of the community, and they pass that knowledge on to someone else and that person trains someone else, it’s something we take pride in and want to encourage.”
For more information about SFOP urban agriculture initiatives, contact Briana Stevenson, SFOP National Urban Ag coordinator, at bstevenson@vsu.edu or 804-524-1021.
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