Greening of Detroit

We had guests staying at our B&B this past weekend who were taking a short respite from their active community work.  As we asked them a little more about their work, it turned out they are heavily involved in community gardening and urban agriculture in Detroit, part of an amazing story of a city that is slowly regenerating itself through vast numbers of volunteers and community members tackling the job of greening vacant lots, turning them into food producing gardens.  There are over 1200 community gardens in Detroit, food being grown for homes, soup kitchens, and for sale at local farmers markets.  There are educational workshops, free soil samples (testing for lead, heavy metals, and other soil conditions), help on building raised beds, seed and seedling distribution, and many other resources available to get new urban farmers off to a positive start!  This is probably the largest urban agriculture program in any one city in North America.  We were honoured to host our guests, hear more about these initiatives, and watch a beautiful photo slideshow of the gardens and farmers markets that have been established.  For more details on this major urban agriculture movement see Greening of Detroit.