In an old, inner-city neighborhood in North Omaha, people are coming together to garden. Sprouting up from the soil are lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, and hope, beauty, and a sense of community. Using urban gardens, the volunteers of the grassroots group City Sprouts are beautifying their neighborhood, revitalizing their community, and creating economic hopefulness. They are doing all this in an area known for deteriorating buildings, violence, and low incomes.
City Sprouts became a group in 1995 when concerned community members came together to reclaim an overgrown city lot and make it a garden. The group’s organizers bought the ½-acre lot and began the hard work of reclaiming the degraded soil. With the help of hundreds of volunteers, weeds were cleared, beds were dug, and seeds planted. The resulting harvest was much more than the vegetables, flowers, and value-added products sold to local restaurants or at the Omaha farmers’ market. Produce shared with neighbors created trust. Youth working in the garden plots learned new skills. And an eyesore became a place of beauty.
City Sprouts soon began to include educational activities in its programs. Through an Omaha Public School program, City Sprout’s new garden was used for a summer science project in 1996 and 1997. Sixty students used eight raised beds to learn about biology. In 1997, members of Girls Inc. and Creighton University women science students made two small prairie plots in the garden that will be used for education on the ecology of prairies.
City Sprouts also holds horticulture, marketing, and nutrition classes for the public. Hands-on learning takes place during the volunteer work parties to maintain the garden.
Besides being nutritionally beneficial, the produce grown in the City Sprouts’ garden may become a small business for resourceful entrepreneurs. During 1998, City Sprouts will work with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Omaha to train 15 low-income teenagers in horticulture production, marketing, accounting, and team-building skills. Volunteers and the interns will construct at least 30 new garden plots with low-income families and community groups in nearby neighborhoods.
Ties to the community are very important to City Sprouts. When starting the garden, volunteers handed out leaflets in the neighborhood announcing their plans and inviting everyone to work days. Local ministers were contacted to involve interested parishioners and the work has been closely coordinated with two nearby neighborhood organizations. The efforts to involve the community has paid off: volunteers have come from over 15 different community groups including churches, neighborhood associations, schools, and unions. Two universities, the Omaha Public Works Department, and Douglas County Extension have also become involved, as well as eight different businesses that donated services or materials.
This good work has not gone unnoticed. City Sprouts has received numerous awards and honors including the Orchard Hill "Neighbor of the Month" award. Their success has also attracted several grants. Besides the annual IMPACT funding, City Sprouts has received grants from the Omaha Community Foundation, the America the Beautiful fund, the American Community Gardening Association, and the Nebraska Environmental Trust.
With its mailing list nearing 600, City Sprouts is growing like the zucchini in its garden. To keep things organized, an 18-member board of directors sets the group’s direction while a small executive committee makes the day-to-day decisions. But while City Sprouts has grown, so too has the expense and organizational complexity of running its operations. Andrew Jameton, a University of Nebraska Medical Center professor and founding member of City Sprouts, says, "The planting of the seeds is not such a problem compared to trying to organize everyone." In 1998, City Sprouts will hire a volunteer coordinator, Jennifer Schumaker, to cultivate and sustain volunteer participation.
City Sprouts’ plans for 1998 include the intern program mentioned above, a North Omaha Garden tour, and activities at their current garden. The group is also planning a demonstration project to develop an additional garden in an empty lot by first recycling lawn waste and other organic materials to build up the soil. "Operation Recover" is the project funded by the Environmental Trust Fund to deliver and monitor the effects of organic materials at the new site. Creighton University botanist Mary Ann Vinton and soil specialist Mike Elson will work with Creighton University science students on this project.
On the original City Sprouts brochure, the description of the group stated "An organic gardening project." Three years later that description has changed to "Sustaining communities through gardening." The group’s broader goal is to act as a catalyst for the greening of inner city Omaha. They are now starting new projects that address local access to food and that establish more community gardens on abandoned land in the city.
Jameton, who lives in the North Omaha neighborhood where City Sprouts works, thinks the hard work is worth it. He says, "The sense of community and rootedness, of getting people together" has been the greatest reward of City Sprouts’ work.
Contacts: Kate Brown and Andy Jameton, Omaha, 402-558-5938