A community farm and wellness space in the heart of Southeast D.C. is making fresh produce available to everyone in the community.
This is part of WTOP’s continuing coverage of people making a difference in our community, reported by Stephanie Gaines-Bryant. Read more of that coverage.
A community farm and wellness space in the heart of Southeast D.C. is making fresh produce available to everyone in the community. It offers delicious summer fruits and veggies, including tomatoes, squash and watermelon.
At The Well at Oxon Run, powered by D.C. Greens, program manager Charles Rominiyi, said they work to promote health equity by building a just and resilient food system. The farm does that in a number of ways through community engagement, advocacy and programs such as its produce prescription program that helps people who are chronically ill gain access to fresh produce.
The Well at Oxon Run program manager Charles Rominiyi. (Courtesy The Well at Oxon Run)
The Well at Oxon Run is a one-acre community farm and wellness space in Ward 8 where they grow crops and distribute produce. The space is located in the middle of Oxon Run Park.
“Walking into the Well is like walking into an oasis,” Rominiyi said, adding that there are flowers blooming, wildlife, fruit trees and berry bushes.
He said there are many ways to experience the space, “getting reconnected to nature, just being in green space.” That includes planting and harvesting.
“We encourage our volunteers to come and get their hands dirty,” Rominiyi said.
He said you can work with their farm team and learn how to plant crops and learn how to manage a small garden. Their volunteer days are on Tuesdays and Thursdays and volunteers learn good agricultural practices.
“You’ll learn how to keep plants alive and how to keep the ecosystem safe,” Rominiyi said.
Greens at The Well at Oxon Run. (Courtesy The Well at Oxon Run)
Wednesdays and Fridays are their community harvest days, which he said, are an opportunity to share in the harvest with the community. Community members can come and harvest up to two pounds of produce.
“That process of harvesting and being connected with your food really does help with healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle,” Rominiyi said.
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Over the past decade, Denver’s relatively new Union Station neighborhood was touted as both one of the city’s most desirable and least desirable places to live — a hub of luxury and a hotbed of crime.
A new Denver Urban Gardens community garden behind the station and above the bus terminal is the latest attempt to restore the neighborhood to its pre-pandemic glory, where restaurants and shops flourished and people walked about, sharing space and enjoying community.
Residents are excited about it. So is Denver Urban Gardens. And a bevy of public relations pros are touting the space as a sign that downtown’s back — a drum beat they’ve been pounding to keep the area active, so property values stay high, businesses return and everybody feels safer.
And maybe, just maybe, if the community members have their way, the garden could even be a meeting place between the haves and have-nots. A space where tensions evaporate as people plant seeds, water plants, grow healthy foods, breathe in the air and decompress from a terribly tense few years.
It’s one of the first steps, driven by the community, in making the area above the bus terminal a place people actually want to be.
Next will be a stage, lunchtime concerts, more food trucks and other amenities the community wants.
All this is welcome news to Laura Morgan, who has lived in the neighborhood through some of its peaks and slumps.
Roughly eight years ago, when Morgan moved from San Francisco into a Union Station apartment at the Platform, the area was poised to become the next hot place to live in Denver.
City planners, developers and urban boosters had spent years plotting the Union Station revival, with a new Downtown bus station below ground and a luxurious neighborhood with big-city vibes where everything was walkable above.
The new 17th Street Gardens behind Union Station is nearly complete. June 11, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
You could work from an office during the day; play at sports arenas, music venues, bars and museums in your free time; and live in stylish housing. Even better, on the weekends, you had easy access to the mountains on Bustang and the Winter Park Express.
“(There were) a lot of people, a lot of population, just lots of booming businesses — people coming to be here,” Morgan said.
As Anna Jones, manager of the Central Platte Valley Metropolitan District, put it, the area was “high-end and yet accessible.”
”Because you have Union Station and all the open public areas,” Jones said. “So it’s kind of where everything comes together. And it really did meet the mark of what the initial designers and developers were thinking.”
Morgan, benefiting from all that planning, liked the area so much that she decided to quit renting and buy a condo at the Coloradan.
Then COVID-19 pummeled the thriving city center.
The public space above the bus terminal and behind Union Station had been built for informal public gatherings, an area for the community.
“It was intended to be a passive, enjoyable linger-in kind of space,” Jones said. “And as the pandemic hit, people emptied out.”
Offices shuttered, restaurants closed. As winter came in 2021, people who had been camping at Civic Center Park were fenced out of that space and moved to the Union Station bus terminal, the public square built above it and the Great Hall itself.
Indoors, people without homes stayed warm, charged their phones and slept in relative safety many said they couldn’t find on the streets or in the emergency overnight shelters. For those who used drugs, they had a place where people could see if they overdosed and administer Naloxone, an overdose reversal drug.
The new 17th Street Gardens behind Union Station is nearly complete. June 11, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
“When COVID hit, things definitely closed down a bit,” Morgan said. “And it was definitely a very interesting experience living here with not as many people and a lot more unhoused people, a lot of different kinds of drug issues that we saw daily, outside our front door.”
Complaints about safety rose as did drug crimes. Some downtown residents applied for concealed-carry permits or bought mace, afraid they needed to defend themselves.
Neighbors reported people using drugs while engaging in oral sex in the entryway to the bus terminal, rats gobbling cereal from boxes littering the gardens and pet dogs getting stuck by syringes.
In December 2021, the head of a transit union described Union Station’s bus terminal as “a lawless hellhole.” Bus drivers were scared to be there.
Ever since, downtown residents, boosters, businesses and politicians have been struggling to bring a sense of safety back to the Union Station neighborhood.
In an effort to create safety, large granite benches above the bus terminal were demolished, giving people one less place to sit comfortably.
The open space where the community gardens now sit was fenced off by the Central Platte Valley Metropolitan District, creating a sense that the area was uninhabitable.
Some residents proposed the people living on the streets, who had nowhere else to go, needed more social services and healthcare or housing. Others wanted them rounded up and put in jail.
The new 17th Street Gardens behind Union Station is nearly complete. June 11, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Listening to the loud complaints of neighbors, Mayor Michael Hancock’s Denver Police Department ramped up its presence. So did RTD’s police force. The transit agency also funded a host of environmental fixes. Private security patrolled the station itself.
And after Mayor Mike Johnston took office, he spent his six months trying to end visible homelessness in the urban core by bringing more than 1,000 people inside and permanently shuttering encampments through increased enforcement.
Morgan and Jones are part of the latest effort to reenergize Union Station, this time by creating the 17th Street Community Garden.
The gardens are being built in the fenced-off areas above the bus station, and while fences will remain, the unsightly, tall chain-link fence will likely be removed, if the Metro District has its way and the city’s planning department approves a new design.
“We have 32 community garden plots,” said Nessa Mogharreban, the director of partnerships at Denver Urban Gardens. “All of the plots are full with residents and businesses to take care of the space, grow food, grow community, and help create a human-based solution for the climate challenge that we’re facing as well.”
Central Platte Valley Metropolitan District manager Anna Jones (left to right), Denver Urban Gardens partnerships director Nessa Mogharreban and 17th Street Gardens leader Laura Morgan sit in the nearly-completed 17th Street Gardens behind Union Station. June 11, 2024.Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Anybody can request a garden, and 50 people have signed up for the list. All you need to join is an email address.
Theoretically, the garden could be a place where the housed and unhoused can garden together.
“I think it’s going to be a really interesting experiment,” Jones said. “This is kind of the ultimate post-pandemic, urban exercise in equitable shared space. If we do this well, I am confident that we will be able to replicate this kind of model all over the country. I think it really is going to be a great post-pandemic paradigm shift that a lot of people are gonna look to.”
ACHIEVE THE HIGHEST RANK IN SCOUTING AT THE MASS AUDUBON CENTER IN SANCTUARY IN BELMONT, A RAINY DAY DELIVERS A WELCOME DRINK TO PROMISING BLOOMS. IT’S A LITTLE BARREN AFTER A LONG WINTER, BUT CLEAR, GREAT CARE WAS TAKEN IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THESE COMMUNITY GARDENS. I HAD TO DO A LOT OF FUNDRAISING, 16 YEAR OLD EMILY GREEN SAYS. THE RAISED BEDS WERE IN DISREPAIR BEFORE SHE LED A TEAM IN REBUILDING THEM. WE PLANTED SOME SOME BULBS WITH THEM TO THE BIG SERVICE EFFORT WAS THE PINNACLE PROJECT THAT EARNED EMILY THE RANK OF EAGLE SCOUT, THE HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENT IN SCOUTING. IT’S LESS THAN 5% OF SCOUTS THAT ACTUALLY ATTAIN THE EAGLE BADGE, AND RIGHT NOW IT’S ABOUT 14% OF THOSE EAGLE SCOUTS NATION WIDE ARE WOMEN. THE SCOUTS WENT COED IN 2019. EMILY SAYS SHE WAS INSPIRED BY HER OLDER BROTHER, JEFFREY, WHO’S ALSO AN EAGLE SCOUT MOM. LIZBETH, WHO MOVED TO THE U.S. FROM COSTA RICA, GOT HER KIDS INVOLVED WITH THE SCOUTS EARLY ON. WE STARTED. GOING TO CUB SCOUTS AND SHE ALWAYS JOINED THE TRIPS AND SHE STARTED LIKING IT, YOU KNOW, PUMPKIN FEST AND LITTLE CAMPING OVERNIGHT TRIPS. SCOUTING BUILDS CONFIDENCE IN THEM AND LEADERSHIP SKILLS TRAITS THE FAMILY WOULD COME TO RELY ON. WHEN EMILY WAS ABOUT TEN AND JEFFREY, 15, THERE WAS A PERIOD OF TIME THAT WE WERE LIVING IN A SHELTER AND WE WERE HAVING A REALLY HARD TIME. THE SCOUTS STEPPED IN, OFFERING THE FAMILY A BASE CAMP LIKE THIS TO STAY IN WHILE GETTING BACK ON THEIR FEET. DEFINITELY DEPRESSION WAS SETTING IN AND IT WAS A REALLY DIFFICULT, TRAUMATIC TIME. SO BEING ABLE TO BE IN A SUMMER CAMP AND ENJOYING IT AND AT LEAST NOT FEELING THAT LIFE WAS SO HARD AT THAT MOMENT. FAST FORWARD SIX YEARS, JEFFREY IS IN COLLEGE AND LIZBETH, WHO WORKS AS A TRANSLATOR, IS PROUD TO LIST EMILY’S MANY ACHIEVEMENTS AS ONE OF THE VERY FIRST FEW EAGLE SCOUTS FEMALE IN THE COUNTRY. SHE’S ALSO A CAPTAIN FOR THE CHEERLEADING TEAM. SHE’S ALSO A YOUTH UMPIRE. SHE ALSO JUST BECAME INDUCTED INTO THE NATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY AND DON’T FORGET MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN HER COMMUNITY. I KNEW I WANTED TO HELP GIVE BACK IN SOME SORT OF WAY WITH NATURE. EAGLE IS 21 MERIT BADGES, A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF LEADERSHIP LIKE EMILY HAD A NUMBER OF LEADERSHIP ROLES. IT’S REALLY A WONDERFUL STORY ABOUT HOW A FAMILY SAID, OKAY, WE’RE GOING TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN. OH, HOW AMAZING IS SHE? INCREDIBLE. THE WHOLE FAMILY TO KIND OF RISE ABOVE, WRITE A WONDERFUL STORY ABOUT THE SCOUTS HELPING EMILY’S FAMILY EMILY THEN HELPING WRITE BACK. AS FOR THE BASE CAMP WHERE THEY STAYED FOR A TIME, THAT’S NOT TYPICAL, BUT IT DOES SER
Emily Green, 16, leads rebuilding effort of community gardens with help of Scouts BSA
Updated: 8:02 PM EDT Apr 13, 2024
At the Mass Audubon Center’s Habitat Education Center and Wildlife Sanctuary in Belmont, Massachusetts, new raised garden beds are ready for spring planting, thanks in large part to 16-year-old Emily Green.”I had to do a lot of fundraising,” Green said.She said the beds, part of the property’s community gardens, were in disrepair before she led a team in rebuilding them.The big service effort was the pinnacle project that earned Green the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest achievement in Scouts BSA.John Judge, CEO of the regional Spirit of Adventure Council — which oversees Massachusetts scouting programs, said less than 5% of scouts attain the Eagle badge.“Right now, about 14% of those Eagle Scouts nationwide are women,” he said.The Scouts BSA went co-ed in 2019. Green said she was inspired by her older brother to start scouting. He is also an Eagle Scout. Green’s mother, Lizbeth Valerio, who moved to the U.S. from Costa Rica, said she got her kids involved early on.”We started going to Cub Scouts, and (Emily) always joined the trips, and she started liking it,” Valerio said. “Scouting builds confidence in them and leadership skills.”Traits the family would come to rely on when, about six years ago, they had to resort to living in a shelter.The Scouts stepped in, offering the family a base camp in Blue Hills Reservation to stay in while getting back on their feet.”Definitely depression was setting in, and it was a really difficult traumatic time,” Valerio said.She said being at the base camp helped. Fast forward to today, and Valerio, who works as a translator, said she is proud to list her daughter’s many achievements that extend beyond the community work she’s done with the Mass Audubon Society, which, according to its website, protects over 41,000 acres of land throughout Massachusetts.”(She’s) one of the very first few Eagle Scout females in the country,” Valerio said. “She’s also a captain for the cheerleading team … a youth umpire … (and) also just became inducted into the National Honor Society.””It’s really a wonderful story about how a family said, ‘Okay, we’re going to make this happen’,” Judge said.
At the Mass Audubon Center’s Habitat Education Center and Wildlife Sanctuary in Belmont, Massachusetts, new raised garden beds are ready for spring planting, thanks in large part to 16-year-old Emily Green.
“I had to do a lot of fundraising,” Green said.
She said the beds, part of the property’s community gardens, were in disrepair before she led a team in rebuilding them.
The big service effort was the pinnacle project that earned Green the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest achievement in Scouts BSA.
John Judge, CEO of the regional Spirit of Adventure Council — which oversees Massachusetts scouting programs, said less than 5% of scouts attain the Eagle badge.
“Right now, about 14% of those Eagle Scouts nationwide are women,” he said.
The Scouts BSA went co-ed in 2019. Green said she was inspired by her older brother to start scouting. He is also an Eagle Scout. Green’s mother, Lizbeth Valerio, who moved to the U.S. from Costa Rica, said she got her kids involved early on.
“We started going to Cub Scouts, and (Emily) always joined the trips, and she started liking it,” Valerio said. “Scouting builds confidence in them and leadership skills.”
Traits the family would come to rely on when, about six years ago, they had to resort to living in a shelter.
The Scouts stepped in, offering the family a base camp in Blue Hills Reservation to stay in while getting back on their feet.
“Definitely depression was setting in, and it was a really difficult traumatic time,” Valerio said.
She said being at the base camp helped. Fast forward to today, and Valerio, who works as a translator, said she is proud to list her daughter’s many achievements that extend beyond the community work she’s done with the Mass Audubon Society, which, according to its website, protects over 41,000 acres of land throughout Massachusetts.
“(She’s) one of the very first few Eagle Scout females in the country,” Valerio said. “She’s also a captain for the cheerleading team … a youth umpire … (and) also just became inducted into the National Honor Society.”
“It’s really a wonderful story about how a family said, ‘Okay, we’re going to make this happen’,” Judge said.
Have you ever noticed that most streets are tall, mighty oaks, maples, spruce, and pine? Very few fruit trees are planted on public property, despite their ability to provide plenty of food. Here’s why cities don’t often plant fruit trees, but how urban orchards may be the solution.
If you were to ask me what my dream world would look like, you bet the cities would be covered in greenery. Fruit trees would be the star of the show, lining every street where we could all take one big juicy bite as we walked by.
This isn’t the first time I’ve discussed replacing street trees with edible ones. Many people worldwide are dealing with food insecurity and looking for reliable green spaces to help.
City and street trees seem like the obvious solution, right?
Well, it’s a little more complicated than planting a peach tree and letting anyone who wants a bite have one. Here are some of the many reasons why cities don’t plant fruit trees.
In Vancouver, many of the streets are lined with cherry blossom trees. Don’t be fooled by the name! They don’t produce fruit.
Fruit Trees Are Messy
One of the main reasons we love fruit—how juicy it is—is also a big reason why we don’t plant fruit trees on public streets. They’re just plain messy!
If no one picks the fruit, it will create a mess on top of cars, sidewalks, and streets, and all that fruit will also get tracked inside.
And when you have lots of available fruit on the ground, you’re going to attract wildlife. This can mean more bugs, pests, rodents, and even larger mammals like deer or bears.
More fruit and nuts will attract all kinds of wildlife.
Not Enough Infrastructure
To keep away the mess, someone needs to be there to harvest all the fruit or clean it up if people aren’t going to pick the fruit themselves.
A good fruit tree requires a lot of maintenance and pruning to achieve the best shape and to direct attention from the tree to growing food. And we all want to make sure they look good.
If you have city trees by your property, you already know that they are neglected by the city. Getting the manpower needed to maintain these trees costs a pretty penny.
Besides paying for labour, cities will need more equipment to maintain and harvest these trees efficiently. Which, yes, costs more money.
Dogwood fruits are bitter and astringent, but birds love them.
Cleanliness of the Fruit
One of the best parts about growing your own food is that you know exactly what went into making it. As an organic gardener, I want to keep my plants as far away from herbicides and pesticides as possible.
But with food grown on public land, I don’t get much of a say. Cities can spray whatever they want on the fruit, and they likely would keep maintenance easy and pests low.
There is also the matter of pollution. Now, this depends on where the fruit trees are planted. But if they’re close to busy streets, they might be covered in soot from exhaust. The pollution can also make its way into the fruit itself, as the trees look for ways to get rid of what it’s absorbing.
It’s easier to trust food you’ve grown in your own garden.
Poor Growing Conditions
It’s no secret that the sidewalk strip is not an easy place to grow things. They don’t call it the hell strip for nothing! The soil here is often compacted, salty, and polluted, leading to an unhealthy tree more susceptible to disease and sub-standard growth.
The plants are also more susceptible to damage from higher street traffic and have to battle with concrete and asphalt to grow good roots.
Because of all this, cities often plant hardy trees on streets. These trees don’t mind the poor growing conditions and will thrive and provide shade.
Fruit trees tend to be small, and larger trees can actually help lower temperatures. Cities are big heat islands, where the paved roads and pathways combined with the buildings amplify and trap the heat. The more surfaces that are covered in green and shade, the fewer heat islands there are.
So, How Do We Improve Food Security With Fruit Trees?
City fruit and nut trees are definitely an option, and many cities have started planting more of them. I’ve spotted many folks in my own neighbourhood collecting chestnuts!
Edible cities and edible parks are becoming increasingly popular. These are public lands with edible trees, bushes, and vegetables that anyone is welcome to. Most will take formerly overgrown or derelict areas and make them useful for the community.
Urban orchards are another similar practice. Like community gardens, these are orchards where people collectively maintain fruit trees and harvest their own fruit. For instance, The Orchard Project is a big charity that focuses on creating more urban orchard hubs in the UK.
Most of these programs and initiatives rely on volunteers to do the maintenance, not city workers. Volunteers will take care of the plants, harvest the fruit, and help distribute it to those who can benefit most.
Urban orchards are great for those who don’t have access to a garden for themselves.
Why Are Urban Orchards Important?
Fruit and nut trees are some of the most amazing things you can grow. They are a staple in food forests and other edible landscapes. Once established, they provide a generous bounty for many years and require very little input.
When accessible, they’re one of the best ways to produce plenty of food and help reduce food insecurity.
The Philadelphia Orchard Project is a great example. They have over 68 partner sites where they produce 200-300 pounds of produce a week. With their harvests, they donate to food pantries and sell produce at farmer’s markets at an accessible price.
Fruit trees also allow people to access and harvest culturally significant foods. There are so many edible plants out there that we’re not eating simply because they’re difficult to find in a grocery store. As a bonus, diversifying what we eat is great for the environment, too.
Native edible trees are some of the best options to include in urban orchards and city streets.
Final Thoughts on Fruit Trees
I’m a big fan of fruit and nut trees. If you are lucky enough to have an edible city tree, consider stepping in and lending a hand to its care and harvest. And if you don’t have one, consider planting one by your fence line. This allows others to enjoy a bite or two as they pass by!
If you can’t harvest it all for yourself, share your bounty with the community. I’m positive plenty of people will jump at the opportunity for organic, local fruit.
