Ujamaa Bronx Community Garden

This spring is Ujamaa Garden's first growing season! Ujamaa Garden is a brand-new, self-sustaining food garden. Our mission is to bring food options and food independence to the food desert of Wakefield in the Northeast Bronx. We are an education, youth advocacy, and abolitionist organization working to promote holistic wellness and creative solutions to social problems affecting our community including the prevalence of systemic racism in the neglect of our schools and communities. Ujamaa Garden is located in a lot that has been abandoned for over ten years. There is serious work to be done to transform the space into a flourishing, beautiful, active community garden including clean-up, building infrastructure, and developing programming. Since October we have been hard at work cleaning years of garbage, debris, and fallen trees in the lot and now it is time for us to build the garden! We are collecting donations to keep the garden beds full of soil, compost, and a range of edible plants and beautiful flowers. The donations will also go to furniture, materials, and honorariums for our first season of youth and community programming including weekly youth programs focused on food education, environmentalism workshops, community meals, and wellness activities such as yoga and group meditation. The donations will also sponsor a family-friendly, community-building block party at the end of the summer. Ujamaa Garden is on a mission to revitalize both the community and the natural habitat of the Northeast Bronx. 

The first thing we will do with the money is purchase enough soil, seeds, starter plants, and garden tools to sustain us throughout the next two growing seasons (spring through fall) by the end of April. The next thing we will do is purchase the necessary furniture to have a skeleton for the garden including seating and a table so our community has comfortable social space to enjoy the garden, a greenhouse so we sustainably house and grow plants through all seasons, and a rain shed to gather and host programming. Currently, the garden's fence is not suitable for garden deliveries so we will prioritize replacing the chainlink fence with an inviting wood fence ($3,000). Although food justice is central to our mission, it is only one part of all we hope to accomplish. After we ensure we have a sustainable garden plan and a workable fence, we will buy the necessary materials to start building our social spaces including a table, chairs, and a bookshelf for educational programming. Once programming starts, the donations will be used to fund food, materials, and honorariums for youth and community programs. 

Ujamaa Garden is a safe, healing space for the community of the northeast Bronx and beyond to reconnect with nature, grow and eat food that will nourish their bodies and souls, find rest, and share resources and talents. Our garden is in a food desert therefore, our work is rooted in the understanding of the importance of food sovereignty and food choice as the necessary starting points for holistic health. Our vision is to set up cooperative systems that will make our communities healthier by growing food and caring for nature within the urban environment. We will work towards an equitable food system by ensuring access to garden space and educating beginner gardeners of all ages.

We have taken responsibility for a lot in the northeast Bronx that has been neglected and used as an illegal dump site for over ten years. Although the Bronx is neglected, we do not have to neglect ourselves – we are reimagining this lot as a space of abundance, growth, community, beauty, and art. We serve as a model for innovative land use by developing program designs and strategies that simultaneously maximize the space and support holistically healthy lifestyles. Ujamaa Garden is a youth garden, meaning the children of this community are the focal point of our mission and practice. Ujamaa Garden is a liberating space where you come as you are with no fear or judgment because we are a loving, communal, playful environment.