THE “QUIET REVOLUTION” IN DETROIT

By Grace Lee Boggs

Michigan Citizen, Aug. 12-18, 2007

It’s three years since I’ve been on the August Garden Tour. At that time we only needed two buses. This year there were so many participants and so many gardens that it took six buses, some visiting gardens on the west side of the city and others on the east side. It also included a bike tour.

The Westside garden tour, according to a young woman who has lived here only one year, included a lot of the city's newer gardens that really showcased the growing trend in community gardening, the different aspects of organizing that are incorporated into gardening, and the involvement of everyone across racial and ethnic lines and across age groups. It was amazing to see so many youth proudly explaining the work they had done on their garden and interacting with elders who are still excited about learning! The entire experience was truly inspiring and served to remind many of the tour participants why we love Detroit.

The first stop was the Brightmoor Community Garden, which was started just one year ago in the Northwest corner of the city. Tour participants were in awe of the gardener's own expansive personal garden, with everything from bees and melons to tomatoes and flowers, but even more impressed by the positive transformation of vacant land into a space where community members beautified abandoned houses adjacent to the garden and have successfully deterred criminal activity. The "D-Town Farm" garden is also new, just under two months old! The gardeners of this Black Community Food Security Network Garden seek to address food insecurity issues in Detroit's black community by providing fresh vegetables and fruit. It was here that I learned from another tour participant about unique ways to grow potatoes in stacks of tires!

Romanowski Farm Park is an amazing collaborative effort between the Greening of Detroit, MSU Extension, Capuchin Soup Kitchen, American Indian Health and Family Services, Latino Soccer League, and two neighboring public schools! An Americorps volunteer who coordinates the effort remarked that some youngsters recalled that just three years ago,there was nothing there. Now there are apple and pear trees, beautiful sunflowers, and vegetables and fruit ranging from okra to collards! One girl who lives in the neighborhood and attends the nearby school gave a few of us an informal mini-tour of some of her favorite parts of the community garden. She proudly informed us that anyone can help and eat from the garden! She remembers when she was just in third grade and, through her class, started to help out with the garden.

We drove by the garden at American Indian Health and Family Services,which features berries used in coming-of-age ceremonies and tobacco used to educate youth about health issues. Our final stop was the Birdtown Garden in Cass Corridor, where we were greeted by chickens, samples of honey, and yet another inspiring story of community members coming together.

A Detroiter who retired recently from her job in the City County Building was on an Eastside bus. “I got a sense,” she told me, “of how important community gardens are to our city and how we need to replicate them all over the city. They reduce neighborhood blight, build self-esteem among young people, provide them with structured activities from which they can see results, build leadership skills, provide healthy food and a community base for economic development, People, especially young people, not only learn where food comes from but how to prepare healthy food.

“We drove down one street where the residents had contacted the Detroit Agricultural Network about the vacant lots on the block. Now, after planting a community garden, the grass is cut on every lawn. There is no litter on the street. People have become more neighborly The garden brought the children together and the adults together. They had discovered a new use for the Land.

“One community garden, grown without pesticides, provides enough healthy food for 25.families. There were a lot of young people on our bus and I thought of the many young people who say they have nothing to do and who only eat fast food.”

“I see this as the ‘Quiet Revolution.’ It is a revolution for self-determination taking place quietly in Detroit.”

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