About Justice Gardens

Justice Gardens is a grass-roots organization working to promote the “production, sharing, and proper use of food” in both urban and rural areas. Using the US Department of Agriculture’s Victory Gardens campaign (1943) as a model, we’re encouraging people to plant Justice Gardens that produce food for the poor and create a greater connection to food and the soil. We’re inviting people to “work for justice from your own backyard.”

The culture of food in this country is starving for a revolution, a revitalization, and a reorientation toward what we eat, how we eat, where we get it, how it’s grown, and who gets the good stuff.

Justice Gardens is working to bring together four areas of food production in order to create a long-term sustainable flow of food into community centers, school cafeterias, food banks, and kitchen tables.

1. We’re asking local farmers who are passionate about sustainability to partner with us in allocating a portion of their crops to be delivered to urban “farmers markets” where low-income families can receive fresh produce at little or no cost.

2. We’re working to create a partnership with local schools to create a school-garden program and curriculum that would enable students to use a portion of their school day working in their own school garden, while learning about the production, nutrition, and the proper use of food.

3. We’re working to revitalize abandoned urban lots and make use of public space by creating Community Justice Gardens run by volunteers who earn credits toward the purchase of the harvested produce. Our goal in our Urban CSA project is to teach families in low income urban neighborhoods to grow their own food, either for their own tables, or as a micro-enterprise business where produce will be sold at local farmers markets. This is urban Community Supported Agriculture.

4. We’re creating a network of home gardeners who have agreed to “work for justice in their own back yards.” The produce from these home gardens is distributed to families in need through local community centers and food banks.

Justice Gardens is currently an all-volunteer organization begun in 2008.

Plant a garden. Grow sustainably. Eat good food. Give a lot of it away.

Plant a Justice Garden and harvest Justice for the poor in your own backyard.