The gardener who saved vacant lots in the Bronx, Karen Washington
Source: Photo by Organic Growers School
When we think of pioneers in the modern urban farming and food justice movements, the towering legacy of work from lifelong New Yorker and activist Karen Washington is an oft-cited example. She’s also known as “urban farming’s de facto grandmother,” and for good reason! She’s created a successful, modern model to create access to healthy food.
Washington challenges people to truly think about where food comes from, and inspires others to farm, eat local and learn about food policy, and how to change it. Like most innovators, she started local in the Bronx with gardening and farming, and observed her community’s lack of access and proximity to well-stocked grocery stores. This speaks to a much larger, complex issue within the nation’s food system as it connects to redlining practices from the twentieth century, and more specifically food insecurity, economic discrimination and racial inequity.
“What I would rather say instead of “food desert” is “food apartheid,” because “food apartheid” looks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics.”
Source: Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV from Pexels
You have to start somewhere, and digging in your own dirt is a good place. So, what inspired Washington to begin growing her own food? The trusty tomato! She says she never liked it. It was never red, but a pale pink with no taste. When she grew one herself on a vine, it was red, brown and juicy! The spark of ambition was there.
Back in 1985, Washington had a big backyard. She had three options: cement it, put in a lawn or grow food. When she chose to grow food, three years later she started her first community garden. Before taking up the cause, Washington worked as a physical therapist, and saw many of her patients - predominantly people of color - suffering from diabetes, obesity and hypertension. Instead of prevention, treatment always involved medication or surgery. The connection hit home when Washington saw her own son experience the same ailments she heard from her patients.
“Look at the pharmaceutical companies,” said Washington. “In my neighborhood, there is a fast-food restaurant on every block, from Wendy’s to Kentucky Fried Chicken to Popeye’s to Little Caesar’s Pizza. Now drugstores are popping up on every corner, too. So you have the fast-food restaurants that of course cause the diet-related diseases, and you have the pharmaceutical companies there to fix it. They go hand in hand. The fact is, if you do prevention, someone is going to lose money. If you give people access to really good food and a living-wage job, someone is going to lose money. As long as people are poor and as long as people are sick, there are jobs to be made. Follow the money.”
The Bronx is filled with empty lots in its underserved communities. Washington transformed many of these into spaces where food can grow. She began with the lot across from her rowhouse with the help of a neighbor.
Source: Photo by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
“It must have been fate, because the next day a big green truck that said Bronx Green-Up pulled up,” she told the New York Times. “A worker hopped out“ and said she was from the New York Botanical Garden and that they were in the process of turning empty lots into community gardens and they would help us.”
It was the birth of what is officially called the Garden of Happiness. “If you come into the garden feeling sad, you will leave feeling happy,” Washington said. She was able to raise hens at home and was able to sell them. Her perspective really changed when the botanical garden provided the Garden of Happiness with fruit trees, bushes, perennials, transplants and seeds. Her relationship flourished from there with the botanical garden, and it helped spead the word about community gardens.
She also launched a farmer’s market and relentlessly engages her community about the intersections of food, poverty, racism, joblessness and a lack of healthcare. Washington also found that there weren’t very many people who looked like her with active roles in the food system.
“The role of grassroots communities has to be making people accountable. When it comes to policy makers, for too long we have been complacent letting government and lobbyists make decisions around our food.”
In 2009, Washington co-founded Black Urban Growers, an organization dedicated to supporting and advocating for black farmers and black leadership in the food movement. While she creates a more inclusive food community, Washington is working to redefine the challenges the food system faces, too.
Source: Photo by Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Washington is former president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, and she has sat on boards of organizations such as Just Food, WhyHunger and the New York Botanical Garden, which also earned her a visit to the Obama White House. She was named a Woman of Distinction by New York State for her role in creating a vibrant urban agriculture scene in New York City.
She also earned a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award for her commitment to improving the lives of low-income Bronx residents by growing fresh, healthy food close to home.
Follow Karen’s most recent updates and video clips from her website!
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