Directory of Gardens

Alabama Community Garden

 

The Alabama Community Garden is located at 2800 Alabama in Houston's Third Ward. It is one of the oldest community gardens in Metro Houston, and the largest raised bed community garden on the Gulf Coast.

 

Alabama Community Garden brings neighbors in the Third Ward together to improve their diet, teach their children good nutrition, and beautify their community. The garden provides fresh fruits and vegetables for the gardeners and the neighborhood, and provides food for some neighbors that would otherwise go hungry. Children work with their parents in the garden and discover where their food comes from as well as the fresh taste of vegetables pulled from the soil that day. The garden is contributing to neighborhood beautification and neighborhood pride with a location where neighbors can gather to work together as well as a beautiful garden that the whole community can admire.

The garden was started in 1985, when Verious Smith enlisted a few friends and began transforming an overgrown, vacant lot into a beautiful organic garden. The transformation from that lowly beginning to the beautiful organic garden of today is a tribute to the work of hundreds of people. Other early leaders in the Alabama Garden include Verious's brother Voydell Smith and Warren Christian. The garden has also benefited from the assistance of TSU's Hands Across the Hood, Bank of America Volunteers, M.D. Anderson Volunteers, and many members of the Urban Harvest staff and board. Materials have been donated over the years from Tim Maher, land from TSU, and funds have been donated by Mark Cotham, Hands Across the Hood, the USDA, and Bank of America. Above all, the garden derives especially from the work and money of the Alabama Gardeners, currently coordinated by J.D. Green.

Middle school students that have learning difficulties learn gardening in the SHAPE Kazi Shule Program. For these youth, the Alabama garden serves as a safe place to discuss life's bigger issues, to learn how plants grow, and absorb the lesson gardening teaches - that if you put in the work, you will reap the benefits.

       

In 2002, Alabama Garden was one of only eight gardens in the nation to receive the prestigious Seeds of Hope Award sponsored by the John Deere Corporation. This is the highest community garden award that a garden can receive. Urban Harvest nominated the Alabama Garden for the award.

The Alabama/SHAPE garden is a wonderful demonstration of all the best that a community garden can be. Urban Harvest congratulates the Alabama SHAPE gardeners for their hard won success and thanks the many staff, volunteers, and donors that helped along the way.

The following article is by J.D. Green, Coordinator of the Alabama Community Garden, Spring 2002:

The year 2001 has been a good year for Alabama Garden. We had the best spring and summer gardens ever. Sixty-seven boys and girls participated in our Easter Egg Hunt with their nineteen parents, for the first time in six years. Our banana tree produced some of the sweetest bananas I've ever eaten. As of November 10th, we had thirteen new gardens, making a total of thirty-two full time gardens. We may gain two more new gardens.

Alabama and our adjoining S.H.A.P.E. Community Garden, are a happy family. Our biggest accomplishment for the year was winning the John Deer Award on December 3rd. To top that, we went on television live, with ABC's Channel 13 on December 5th. The year 2001 will be remembered by us for the years to come.

As I have said many times to Alabama Garden, it is not what the community can do for us, but what we can do for the community. I wish you all could see our fall-winter garden, it has never looked better. In keeping with our founder Verious's dream, we are still giving to the community. May God continue to bless us here at Alabama and S.H.A.P.E. Community Garden. We are united in asking that God Bless America.

--J.D. Green

 

 

 

2311 Canal St., Suite 122, Houston, TX 77003
713-880-5540 •