Pride GROWs in Toledo

It’s the feeling of spring and summer. The dirt under your fingernails and the smell of sweat might be overwhelming to some, but at the end of the growing season, all of your hard work will come to fruition as the plants you’ve worked to sustain bring you vegetables and fruits to enjoy.

This is the feeling of success that Toledo GROWs wants to bring back to the city of Toledo and northwest Ohio. Toledo GROWs is a grassroots, nonprofit program created by the Toledo Botanical Garden. It assists people who are interested in establishing community gardens in the Toledo area, as well as areas in northwest Ohio.

“We want our city to be accessible as a dwelling place, and as a safe place, and not just a place where we think, for some reason, tourists are going to want to come, or people who are going to go work for eight hours of their day and then leave,” said Page Armstrong, a professor at the University of Toledo.

Before the involvement of UT’s Jesup Scott Honors College with Toledo GROWs, Armstrong participated in Toledo GROWs through other organizations. She’s been working with them for seven years.

“They [Toledo GROWs] do many things, but they started off with promoting urban gardens in the city of Toledo and helping people start gardens,” Armstrong said. “Since then, they’ve added on a whole educational component. They work with inner city kids; they work with families, they work in neighborhoods helping to educate people about growing food and nutrition.”

First launched in 1997, Toledo GROWs has been in operation for nearly two decades and has supported over 165 gardens in northwest Ohio. Their mission is to better the Toledo environment and community, according to their website. Toledo GROWs is accomplishing their goal by providing assistance to those that want to start their own gardens in the area.

Toledo GROWs provides the tools, supplies and funding needed to establish community gardens in northwest Ohio. According to their website, Toledo GROWs also sends out volunteers to provide assistance with the preparation and the starting of the gardens. After this initial work, the garden is now in the hands of the community and they are responsible for the growth and flourishing of the plants.

“If a group comes to them, or a person comes to them and wants to start a garden, they will help them start the garden, they will give them free plants, they’ll lend them tools, they’ll go out and put some labor into it, but it won’t be their [Toledo GROWs] garden,” Armstrong said.

The community gardens that Toledo GROWs has established are in a variety of different locations. These areas include schools, backyards and vacant lots. According to Armstrong, Toledo GROWs does not just enhance the appearance of the city of Toledo. The program also aids in making the city of Toledo more accessible to those in need.

“I really like that Toledo GROWs is trying to work with all groups in Toledo,” Armstrong said.

Plants such as vegetables, fruits and flowers are grown in the community gardens. The growth of these plants have improved the access some Toledo community members have to fresh and healthy foods. With the gardens that Toledo GROWs creates, there is a way for these people to have access to healthy foods.

According to Toledo GROWs website, school groups can visit the Robert J. Anderson Urban Agriculture Center, the headquarters of Toledo GROWs. On these field trips, students tour the farmstead and learn more about Toledo GROWs. The center is an urban farm where the workers of Toledo GROWs raise plants to be taken to community gardens and planted.

“It’s a place where they [guests and those involved with Toledo GROWs] can come and learn; we have workshops here,” said Yvonne Dubielak, an outreach and education director for Toledo Botanical Garden.

According to Dubielak, Toledo GROWs is an opportunity for Toledo community members to work with the soil that their food grows from. In addition to getting people involved with nature and educating people about the importance of plant life, the Toledo GROWs program provides a way for people to communicate and learn from one another, Dubliak said. Toledo GROWs also has a council that welcomes gardeners to exchange ideas and resources that other gardeners could use and benefit from when working on their projects.

“We’ve been around for about 20 years and started as a grassroots org to promote community gardening, to get people connected back with the soil, the source of their food,” Dubliak said. “What we do is, we help community gardens throughout the city and throughout the area. We do a lot of networking, partnering with other organizations as well, so that we can help funnel resources to those [community gardens] gardens as much as possible.”

According to their website, Toledo GROWs hosts volunteers every Wednesday during the spring growing season from 9 a.m. to noon to help in the greenhouses and around the agriculture center growing and cultivating the food. You can volunteer at the Toledo GROWs headquarters, The Robert J. Anderson Urban Agriculture Center, at 900 Oneida St. in Toledo.

More information about the Toledo GROWs program and where you can volunteer can be found at their website: http://www.toledogarden.org/toledogrows.