Community Gardens - Justice Le Tran Alexander

 

I find much joy in discovering what inspires me to get up at 8am on a Saturday morning. But if there was as good of a reason as any the Community Garden in South End of Newport News would be it. 

In recent weeks I've grown closer to the garden (technically a farm), and it has driven me to layer the sociological, agricultural, and fundamental trepidation that comes with learning about it.

This project is only available to me because of Serve the City Peninsula and Hampton Roads Urban Agriculture. These local grassroots organizations are able to mobilize volunteers to the place that need it the most like the South End of Newport News. This garden serves not only as a place of communal food production, but as hub of cultural initiative. People from all walks of life come to help this community grow food for themselves which is a tremendous feat. Inadvertently, the people from Hampton Roads Urban Agriculture are actively bringing lost agricultural knowledge to the people of the South End and adjacent locations in Hampton Roads. It's not that no one knew how to plant a garden or run a farm before, but that say 100, 200 years ago agricultural knowledge would've been far more commonplace. Looking back 1,000 or 5,000 years ago it would've been the basis for the productivity of whole communities. Astonishing how far we've come where knowledge of soil composition and land use fundamentals while at the tip of fingers ends up miles away from where it's needed most. However, with the continuation of the garden project, this knowledge can hopefully help to even the playing field just a little more.



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