FOOD // GARDEN
By Tiffany PaigeCreating Food Security
through Urban Gardening
Women Changing the Landscape of Our Cities
There are a number of good reasons to
grow your own or to participate in community
gardening efforts. You have an intimate rela-
tionship with the soil and can contribute to soil
remediation. You know where the seeds are
coming from (and can join groups like the Seed
Library of Los Angeles) and can go even better
than organic by controlling what is sprayed on
the plants.
Community Healing Gardens
Urban gardening is a great way to bring com-
munities together. Just ask Nicole Landers of
Community Healing Gardens (CHG). The
nonprofit started with garden boxes in the city
spaces along the streets of Venice, where she
resides. The raised beds offer opportunities for
growing food that are open to the community
that wanted — or more importantly needed
— these opportunities. Now three years after
founding the organization, there are 66 boxes
sprinkled throughout Venice accompanied by
after school programs developed to teach kids
about gardening.
Nicole learned about urban gardening at
UCLA where she studied under the Sustainable
Certificate Program. Her interest sprouted as a
kid, when she learned to grow tomatoes, herbs,
basil, oregano, chives, onions, and spinach.
Her father had a plot of land at a community
garden space along the Westside Highway in
NYC. She’s brought this passion to her present-
day home community to address areas of food
insecurity and food deserts throughout the
southland. For example, CHG has partnered
with the nonprofit St Joseph’s Center to useproduct harvested by CHG in the culinary pro-
gram of the Center’s work experience kitchen,
where they feed upwards of 100 homeless and
transitioning men and women a day.
In Watts, CHG has stepped in to build an
innovative relationship with the community’s
only public middle school. They’ve cultivated
the earth in one acre of land to grow food with
their school farm and orchard program. CHG
is teaching kids about the importance of grow-
ing their own food, showing how fun it is, and
then giving that food back to the community.
Anyone can participate through harvesting
the food or joining in on community planting
days. People can also adopt a box or a tree and
learn about the beauty and necessity of urban
gardening. “The one thing that binds us all is
food. We all need nourishment and the food“Every patch of soil is an opportunity to grow food,” says Community Healing Gardens Co-Founder
Nicole Landers. In the greater Los Angeles area, where the 365-day-a-year growing season means
that there are abundant opportunities for everyone to be an urban gardener, Nicole is member of
a pioneering group of women transforming the modern cityscape.