Cesar Chavez Community Garden

Anishnabeg Country, Detroit, Michigan, USA

The Brief

Our brief is to support the vision of this community garden and help the food forest come to fruition. A dynamic and resourceful community with big hearts and vision. All set in vibrant and diverse Detroit – a place almost like no other of richness, resilience and vulnerability.

We’re so excited to be asked to contribute to this – one of the many community gardens in Detroit. We are supporting the community design process with Graft Living Studios. Hearing the ideas of members of the community garden and evaluating the site. Suggesting ways of clarifying, grounding, resolving and supporting the emerging garden design.

We are guided by an ethos of listening and reflecting back. We hear these questions – What grows where? How can existing skills be expanded through the community? How can funding be attracted to this vital project…

Challenges

• Unknown and fluctuating levels of community resources
  
• Curating a design that accommodates a wide range of approaches, desires and ideas
  
• Possible need for remediation in urban landscape
  
• Ensuring a de-colonial approach to design

Design & Implementation

We engage with and learn about the community and continue to nurture those relationships to cultivate an abundant hub of skill sharing, generational and cross-cultural connections, regenerative energy solutions and food production. With a team of collaborators, organized by Graft Living Studios, the Cesar Chavez Community Garden has transformed from a grassy lot speckled in trees to a gathering and growing space that offers up knowledge, food and sanctuary. 

Over time a geo-thermal greenhouse, aquaponics system, perennial food and native plantings, raised annual garden beds, gathering space, composting and vermicomposting systems, rainwater collection and skill sharing experiences have already popped up on site! Up next will be the care and maintenance of the work done so far, refining and adding to the gardens and the installation of ‘Unity House’, an off-grid community center.

Ideas in Action

• The regenerative power of gardens as hubs for community
  
• Deep listening and respect 

• Participating as advocates for social & ecological change
  
• Designing projects that can rapidly scale-up and scale-down and still remain strong

Outcomes

• Garden and garden community are growing!
• Funding applications are in progress, with early successes already achieved
• Skill-sharing sessions and filming
• Perennial & annual foods being harvested
• The work of growing food and community is expanding beyond this space with new gardens being cultivated at other local sites

“Working with Bridget, Charlie, and Bede on developing a food forest in SW Detroit has been nothing short of inspiring. This team has been sharing their decades of experience in a way that’s digestible, tailored for the timing + specifics of my project, and where I feel so valued as their client. I can feel their excitement and compassion around transforming this modern world into one that’s more balanced, natural, and just. Thank you for being professionals and friends.”

Alex Kwon

Director of Graft Living Studios

Cesar Chavez Community Garden

Anishnabeg Country, Detroit, MI, USA

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