Would You Share Your Yard?
Sharing is Caring
This past month, I had the opportunity to participate in LBFresh and PlacemakingUS Foodways Summit in Long Beach, CA. The days were filled with captivating speakers and activities hosted by local growers, policy wonks, and placemakers.
At the summit, Kathleen Blakistone welcomed us to her homestead. What made this visit special was seeing her front yard and backyard transformed into an urban farm located in the heart of a Compton, CA neighborhood. Moonwater Farm is a space filled with outdoor rooms, a large dining table, sculptures, an aquaponic system, crops, fruit trees, chickens, and goats. It is curated to be a welcoming space for community members to learn and to access fresh fruits and vegetables. The farm also serves as a place of refuge and restoration; a gem for us city dwellers.
Visiting Moonwater Farm reminded me of another home located in the dense Long Beach neighborhood of Rose Park, adjacent to a business and art corridor known as Retro Row. The Lopez family transformed their front yard into a community garden where their neighbors and friends are welcomed to grow, volunteer, and pick from. Accompanying the garden is a community library, filled with books for anyone to take or contribute to. Both Moonwater and the Lopez Family Garden are cared for by their owners and volunteers.
What Moonwater Farm and the Lopez Family Garden are doing is especially impactful in the midst of a housing and climate crisis. Disportionately, communities of color are heavily impacted by both the housing shortage and climate change. The idea of home ownership is becoming a fleeting idea for most Americans. As cities work on addressing these problems, it’s encouraging to see what tactical solutions residents themselves are coming up with to mitigate the lack of green space and access to fresh fruits and vegetables. It is a true testament of the level of social-cohesion that exists within our communities.
Given the shortage of gardening and green space, I can’t help but ponder the untapped opportunities that single-family homes and property owners have to mitigate the growing challenges cities are facing regarding access to green space and food. I will leave the reader with this question, what does it mean to be a good neighbor and steward of land?
This publication was written by Alma Castro, the Founder of Civic Confidence, LLC. Our publication series is dedicated to highlighting projects that we’re involved in, to celebrate and elevate its colleagues, and to discuss in community our interests and areas of expertise. Civic Confidence is a consultancy firm that provides government and organizations the added boost needed to get important work done. Clients who seek us out are researching, developing, and implementing projects that have a profound impact in the lives of many. We unleash mindful work and big results.
