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