A Garden in the Bronx
How a small urban farm is helping one community eat well without leaving the neighborhood.
Along Third Avenue in the center of the South Bronx, the street is filled with McDonald’s and commercial fried chicken joints that fit neatly among rows of low-income apartments. Though the fast-food enterprise rakes in billions of dollars each year in the U.S., it has a particularly overwhelming presence in poor communities such as the South Bronx. The neighborhood boasts the highest rates of asthma and diabetes in the city, according to the city Department of Health’s 2006 Vital Statistics Summary. Growing up on greasy hamburgers and high-fructose soft drinks, residents often find themselves with little understanding of healthy eating and where to find better options.
Just around the corner, on 165th Street and Boston Road, there is something surprising for this area: A once abandoned lot overwhelmed by rubbish and drug dealers has been converted into a community garden called the Jacqueline Denise Davis Garden, or the JDD. This community garden is part of an initiative called Learn it, Grow it, Eat it, started in 2006 and funded by the Council on the Environment of New York City to educate teens about their health and their community.
“Community gardens are becoming a trend,” says David Saphire, the project coordinator of Learn it, Grow it, Eat it, or LGE. The venture was partially based on other urban farms that have experienced great success, such as Added Value in Red Hook, Brooklyn and East New York Farms in East Brooklyn.
While there are over 600 community gardens in New York City alone, Saphire says that LGE is one of the only initiatives that incorporates health education in high schools. The JDD, Wishing Well Community and the Model T gardens in the Bronx are all part of LGE.
In Saphire’s office, on the opposite end of New York City, located just across the street from City Hall, he explains how the idea developed. Saphire was teaching a nutritional program in local high schools in the South Bronx, touting healthy alternatives to the common fast-food pitfalls. Saphire, a self-educated nutrition guru who has been an environmental educator and researcher for the last 10 years, is a thin man, one who looks like he practices what he preaches.
Working in the South Bronx, it didn’t take long for Saphire to notice a gap between what he was teaching in his nutrition lessons and what foods were readily available to his students. The solution Saphire proposed: Teach the kids about healthy alternatives by having them grow their own fruits and vegetables. And, as an added bonus, make it free.
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