An urban green space brings
produce - and purpose - to
underserved Lynchburg residents.

By Meredith Barnes

Paul lam could little have imagined that the destruction of his beloved garden would inspire so much new opportunity for others. Lam, an Amherst County man who lived in a group home for the developmentally disabled, was a talented gardener who tended a small vegetable garden on the home’s property. Then, one fall morning in 2003, he stood by powerlessly as a bulldozer, following a misunderstood utility work order, erased nearly a decade’s work.

Attorney Michael Van Ness and stained-glass maker Derek Cunningham read about the accidental destruction a few days later in a Lynchburg newspaper. Although the two friends didn’t know Lam, they were so moved by his story that they promised to help him find a new garden space by the next spring (the old one wasn’t in an ideal location). “Instead of sticking a check in the mail, we were going to get dirt under our nails to make it happen,” says Van Ness. “Learning about Paul and the predicament he was in changed my life.”

Others had also read the story and wanted to help. Appalachian Electric Power donated a better-situated piece of land adjoining the group home, and local businesses and volunteers pitched in with a tiller, seeds, and compost. By April 2004, Lam celebrated his 52nd birthday in his new, larger garden, which still supplies the home’s residents with high-quality fresh vegetables.

Van Ness, Cunningham, and other friends who’d been involved in rebuilding Lam’s garden recognized the community connections that such a project could nurture and began to discuss starting an urban garden in downtown Lynchburg to serve residents who normally couldn’t afford fresh, organic produce. “The rebuilding of Paul’s garden showed us that gardening can indeed change people’s lives by providing healthy food and a sense of community,” says Van Ness. “We wanted to do something to turn around the notion that ‘the rich get organic and the poor get diabetes.’” And so the seeds of Lynchburg Grows were planted.

Cunningham, who uses crutches due to congenital spina bifida, had benefited from a job-coaching program in his youth and wanted to pay it forward. “A job coach helped me train in stained-glass-making,” he says. “I saw the potential for an urban farm to provide job training for people with disabilities—and to give inner-city families access to fresh, local produce and a chance to interact with nature.”

Lynchburg Grows was incorporated as a non-profit in the fall of 2004, and Cunningham and Van Ness began to scour the city for available garden space for their new organization. Enter the Schenkel family, who had once raised more than 20 percent of the state’s roses in their 70,000 square feet of greenhouse space next to the city stadium.

The Schenkels’ rose business closed in 1999, a victim of foreign competition, but the 1920s-era cypress-wood greenhouses remained. The family, reluctant to see their farm become an anonymous commercial property, had turned down several offers from developers. When Cunningham and Van Ness approached them with the Lynchburg Grows idea, the family offered to lease them the property with an option to buy. The old rose farm began a second life as the H.R. Schenkel Urban Farm and Environmental Center, home of Lynchburg Grows.

There was plenty of work still to be done. The group sought the help of local schools and the Lynchburg community to clean out the greenhouses, which were full of dead and dying roses. Over the next 18 months 700 people, including the freshman class from Lynchburg College, showed up to clean and repair the structures. Van Ness, who specializes in environmental law, felt that the soil should be replaced. Because of its proximity to a sign company that had used solvents and other chemical compounds and its own history of using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the Schenkel property was what’s known as a “brownfield,” or property that could be contaminated. “Usually brownfield properties become big-box retail stores instead of agricultural sites,” explains Van Ness, who through Lynchburg’s brownfield assessment program learned that the Schenkels were good stewards of the land, using conventional insecticides, pesticides, and fertilizers in accordance with the manufacturers’ recommended amounts.

But that still meant there could be residual chemical compounds in the soil, and Van Ness was concerned that some of the chemicals, particularly the heavy metals, would be taken up into the plant tissues.

“Since we are focusing on helping individuals with developmental disabilities and have a lot of school-aged children working in the beds,” he explains, “I was concerned that those two population groups in particular might be sensitive to chemicals and toxins in the soil.” Cunningham and Van Ness collected food scraps from the dining halls of local schools, and the city brought in 2,000 tons of woods chips and dead leaves. Over two years Lynchburg Grows created 3,000 tons of highquality chemical-free soil and saved the city $96,000 in landfill costs.

Ladybugs, praying mantises, and grasshoppers do the pesticide work for Lynchburg Grows’ no-spray vegetables today. And four greenhouses with raised beds and wheelchair-accessible aisles are fully functioning. Another five greenhouses await repairs and cleaning.

Even with all of the decay, a number of the old roses have survived, some growing through broken ceiling panes. Volunteers with pruning shears tamed the bushes, and the resulting blooms are donated regularly to local nursing homes and shut-ins (500 dozen roses were delivered just last year).

During the course of a week at Lynchburg Grows, kids work with people their grandparents’ age, able-bodied people work alongside those with mental or physical disabilities, and at-risk youth learn skills and that their energy can make things grow. Children who eschewed vegetables have been known to demand that their parents cook whatever treasure they brought home from that day’s garden adventure.

Through partnerships with local schools, two special-needs classes visit the farm every Thursday to do farm and garden chores. “It’s so empowering, especially for the kids with the most severe disabilities,” Van Ness says. “It offers them the ability to give back, and they don’t often have that opportunity. It gives them a great feeling.”

At-risk youth from a juvenile detention center visit on Fridays, and Central Virginia Community College uses the facility for job training. A portion of any produce sales from student work goes into scholarship funds for post-graduate horticultural programs.

“Lynchburg Grows is a place that offers so much more than just organic vegetables—it gives my students a chance,” says Amanda Ramirez, a teacher at Lynchburg’s E.C. Glass High School who brings her class once a week. “My students see first-hand how food is produced. It would be difficult to teach them about the life cycle of a plant, for example, without the real-life experiences they gain from Lynchburg Grows.” Animals are also part of the experience. Chickens in a mobile pen provide customers with fresh, free-range eggs. And an odd assortment of other farm creatures—a Muscovy duck, a pair of Japanese pheasant, an enormous tom turkey, and two goats—is an added attraction for visiting children.

The group’s 20-week CSA—a program in which customers pay $15 to $30 per week to receive a portion of the produce grown (shares were still available as of press time)—includes vegetables such as Asian bok choi, salad greens, peas, squash, herbs, and tomatoes, depending on the season. And if a CSA member is out of town or can’t pick up his share, it’s donated to the Lynchburg Daily Bread homeless shelter.

The group also sells its produce at the Lynchburg farmers’ market and donates a portion to local charities. Last year Lynchburg Grows and St. John’s Episcopal Church, which maintains one of the greenhouses, donated 5,000 pounds of vegetables to Daily Bread as well. Nearby restaurants Grace, Isabella’s Trattoria, and Bull Branch feature the farm’s tomatoes, greens, beets, and herbs. “When a good

restaurant buys our produce, tells our story on the menu, and shows off these vegetables in the best possible light, it widens our network of donors and volunteers,” says Cunningham.

The more than 23,000 community volunteers over the past three years prove there’s solid community interest. And there are plans to add even more facets to the operation: A storefront on the property where seasonal produce could be sold; a mobile education unit called the Grasshopper that could be dispatched to local schools; and a Peter Rabbit book tie-in garden for disabled preschoolers. There are also plans to expand the small aquaponic system, in which fishponds provide fertilizer and irrigation for the garden beds. But to maintain their current programs and achieve future goals, Lynchburg Grows needs more customers, volunteers, and materials—so the timeline for these projects has not yet been established.

Van Ness explains that though the group exercised its purchase option in 2006, it still owes $170,000 toward the full cost of the property. The tightening credit market has made it difficult to get a mortgage. But once it owns the farm outright, Lynchburg Grows can put a conservation easement on the property, ensuring that it will be preserved as an urban green space.

“Mr. Schenkel used to joke that when you live in a glass house in the city, you don’t advertise,” says Cunningham, who laughs at the notion. He believes in showing off all of the good work the community has achieved. “Everybody who comes here brings something of value,” he adds. “And, we hope, takes away even more.”

URBAN GARDENS IN THE COMMON WEALTH

Each new volunteer, customer, or donor helps further the mission of Lynchburg Grows. To that end, guests can visit, purchase vegetables, and see the operation for themselves on the first Saturday of each month. For more information, go to www.lynchburggrows.org or call (434) 846-5665. Here, some other urban garden projects in the state:

Muddybike Urban Garden Project, Harrisonburg, (540) 433-2363. Making deliveries by bicycle, this organization grows produce organically and employs people in need. It also sells its produce at the Harrisonburg farmers’ market.

QCC Farms, Charlottesville, www.cvilleqcc.com . This group has created several gardens in Charlottesville to serve low-income residents with organic vegetables—and information about nutrition and the environment.

Meredith Barnes has worked as a chef and freelance writer locally for 13 years. She lives in Charlottesville and currently teaches culinary arts at the Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center.