Collard City Growers also manages three other previously vacant lots including Freedom Square, an outdoor concert venue nestled in a growing food forest; Food Cycle, a living sculpture garden and community composting initiative; and the L-lot, where we keep bees, focus on creating a habitat for pollinators, experiment with bioremediation, and where we hope to start future seasons’ seedlings in a recently donated greenhouse.
These green spaces have given us an opportunity to work together physically and provide a platform from which to educate the public about the health of our community and ecology as it relates to food. Aside from growing plants and feeding our community, we hope that Collard City Growers and complementing landscapes become places where people ‘grow’ themselves by learning new skills, connecting with neighbors, and sharing their stories as a means to aid community progress.