Plant Our Seeds Together to Grow Souls and Safety
[Music]
my name is sherry
i was born and raised in the city of
detroit on the west side
i grew up in a neighborhood that by
today’s standards will be called low
income
but i didn’t know it at the time where i
grew up
on a block with families and children
where we played outside all day playing
together
and we ate what i call the original
lunchables
which was empty bowls that we took
outside that we would collect
mulberries and pears and apples
and all kinds of fruits and things that
were growing in the neighborhood and sit
on the porch and eat
and our original juice boxes came in the
form of water hoses
that we drank out of on the side of
somebody’s house wherever we were
so we played in our neighborhood for
hours which turns into weeks and months
and years because we all lived on the
same block for a long time
but when i was a kid i never thought
about things like
urban agriculture or farming or
local growing because nobody i knew did
that
when i grew up and went away to college
i moved to the suburbs for a few years
and at the age of 38 i moved back to the
city of detroit
and i quickly realized that things were
different
i couldn’t easily find things like
the fresh fruits and vegetables and
organic produce that i could find right
up the road in livonia
or birmingham or in dearborn
i also noticed something else was
different about the area where i grew up
is that there was less of a lot of
things less businesses
less schools and less people
and less houses and so
i had the opportunity to be introduced
to something called
urban agriculture which was a new term
when i was 38
but it seems to be something popular
happening in the city and so i had the
opportunity in the form of a fellowship
at a farmers market to learn about urban
agriculture
and that became
an exciting journey for me when i
learned that people
inside the city of detroit were actually
growing food like actual food that you
could eat
pears cucumbers squash and this was
amazing to me because even when i was a
kid
and some of our elders used to have like
the backyard gardens and
my aunts and uncles and my grandmother
would try to get me to plant with her i
was very
very adamant that that was not what i
wanted to do
i was a city girl and i was not about
the the backyard garden life
so at 38 when i started to spend time
with urban agriculture in an amazing
neighborhood called hope village
at the whole village farmers market i
started to discover that all around the
city
gardens were popping up green spaces
things that
people said were great for neighborhood
revitalization and food was growing
but then i noticed something else
because i would sit in meetings with
people philanthropic organizations and
community stakeholders and all these
groups of people that said gardens are
great
green spaces are great these things are
great for the neighborhood they’re going
to revitalize they make everything
better
but as i worked with the farmers market
and i moved throughout the city to see
more and more of these spaces i noticed
something common was happening i would
see spaces that had been planted
but never fully developed and then i
would see things that looked more like a
desert than a garden though they were
designed really nice
and what i discovered was what was being
planted
wasn’t being planted the right way what
do i mean by the right way
things were being planted food was there
crops were there
the zucchini was there the kale was
there but something was missing
and i realized that there were certain
conditions that were missing
and certain seeds that were missing and
so i want to share those with you guys
because there’s lots of them right
so the way that things were being
planted wrong was that
nothing was being planted in connection
and by connection i mean in connection
with people spaces were being cropped up
things were being designed empty lots
were being
renovated but no one was connected to it
so what would happen and you’ve probably
seen this is if you’ve gone to
a place and seen what looked like it
might have been a garden
that now looks deserted or someone’s
yard who
was really excited about getting into
gardening until they realized how
overwhelming
this seemingly relaxing hobby could be
so what i started to learn was that when
people plant in connection
with one another we plant better we’ve
been told a lot to just
do something as individuals you know
plant a garden
go out and start something in your
backyard on your windowsill
or in a little pot on your desk it’s
great for you
it’s going to lower your stress levels
and that’s great when we do things as
individuals
as far as the marketing companies are
concerned but not so great in our
communities
especially in low-income communities
what we found was that
when things weren’t in connection nobody
participated
so we ended up with empty green spaces
that soon turned into brown spaces
so how do we plant in connection how do
we get
people involved in
this urban agriculture and plant the
right seeds the right way
well what are some of the right seeds
well the first right seed
is a welcoming environment part of my
journey in the whole village farmers
market
was planting flowers and things to
beautify the space
for the neighborhood to come in and one
day two elder women
walked up to me as i was weeding in the
garden
dancing and listening to r b because
that’s the best way to do your weeding
in the garden
and they walked up to me and they said
thank you for doing this here
and the here that they were speaking of
is a park
on the west side of the city of detroit
that borders highland park
that in 1997 was the site of a tornado
and so decimation homes destroyed
was a horrible sight and then became the
site of intense illegal dumping
so it was almost a trashing ground until
a local organization decided to renovate
it into a park
to a beautiful little gated park with
gardens and so
when i started volunteering and i worked
in this garden and these women from
a senior citizens home next door came
and said thank you so much for doing
this here because we’ve never seen
anything like this
here because in this neighborhood we
didn’t grow dahlias and
and verbena bonariensis we didn’t have
those things
growing up we didn’t have food growing
right next door
not on purpose anyway the mulberries
were great
but that sparked something in me because
i realized they felt
welcomed into this space they felt
welcome to come in
and hang out with the children at the
farmers market and seeing
the seniors talk to the school-aged
children and show them how to fly kites
and show them
how to knit and share skills with them
that they wouldn’t have normally had
were the seeds of connection with the
seeds of
the welcoming environment where
everybody felt like they could come in
where we had people from the homeless
housing across the street and the senior
citizen home and the school children
all together and the working class
people from up the street
all working together all singing and
dancing together
because they were in a welcoming
environment so one of the seeds that we
have to plant is a welcoming environment
the second seed which goes back to those
same events
is intergenerational communication
one thing that i learned about in the
garden is that
whether you’re 5 or 65 nature works
pretty much the same
everybody still has to drop the seed in
the ground and wait for it to grow
everybody still has to wait for the
fruit to be ripe to eat it
and we all are kind of on a level
playing field there’s no technology
that anybody has to be afraid to use
though
there’s apps we have apps but
in the garden young people and older
people and adults and children can all
work together
and help each other because everybody
has the ability
to help and take part and feel like they
belong in connection
because in the garden diversity is
important and so we don’t want anybody
to feel left out
the next seed that we have to have in
the garden is sound
i’m big on sound and one of the things
in urban areas is you’re always
listening for things
and one thing that always gets
everybody’s attention is
loud noise and music so
in the garden i believe you have to have
the seeds of sound
whether that is music whether that is
laughter or drumming or dancing
or children playing or reciting or
a wireless bluetooth speaker playing
everything from sam cook
to stevie wonder to beyonce there has to
be a sound because sound
is a universal language music is
universal to everyone it makes people
feel like there must be a party going on
let’s go see what it is
and so if we plant the sounds more
people get drawn into our urban spaces
and the last seed that we have to have
in all of our gardens in urban
agriculture
is purpose and participation one thing
that we find in low-income areas
is there sometimes is a divide between
people who are
employed and unemployed and we know in
low-income areas
unemployment is an epidemic but in the
garden
there is no resume workshop there is no
what what school did you go to in the
garden everybody can drop a seed in the
hole everybody
can tend the soil everybody can pour
water and in the garden many
people have found their purpose i’ve met
people who
didn’t fit into traditional corporate
settings and didn’t know that they were
farmers until they were exposed to urban
agriculture
and didn’t know that they could produce
food for not only themselves but for
dozens of households
and they found their purpose the garden
allows everybody to have a purpose and a
role
and to fit in and to feel like they
belong which is what
breeds connection and so
the seed of participation and purpose
is vital in every situation where we
want to see connection and so
i challenge everybody to grow in
connection because food grown in
connection
tastes better i’m certain of it the
fruit is sweeter
when it is grown in connection food has
less calories
when it was grown in connection that
might not be totally true
but you got to trust me on that you
won’t gain as much weight
if you eat food in connection okay so
my challenge for everyone is to find
someone
even though you could grow on your own
even though you might have the space
or the seeds grow in connection with
someone else because when we grow in
connection
we grow our communities and when we grow
our communities we grow ourselves
because when we grow together we grow
together
thank you
you