Baltimore, MD

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2022

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: Older adults in a Baltimore's North Avenue neighborhood needed an accessible place to gather. The project transformed the Red Shed garden with a concrete ADA walkway, a pergola for shade and lighting and spaces for community mosaics. Volunteers created a welcoming event area that now hosts gatherings and cultural celebrations. One participant said, "It means the world to me to be part of building this. We have helped our neighborhood and made something beautiful!"

Project description was created using generative AI and then reviewed for accuracy.

Mobile, AL

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2022

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: When the Mobile Medical Museum added a medicinal garden to its campus, the space included a a wooden boardwalk. However, older adults and people with disabilities struggles to navigate the boardwalk. This project made the garden ADA-compliant. Organizers removed the boardwalk and repaved and widened a crumbling concrete path leading to the garden. The garden -- which features medicinal herbs -- hosts community events, as well as art and horticultural therapy classes for people with disabilities and their families.

San Diego, CA

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2022

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: To organizers with Bayside Community Center, a patch of dirt in Linda Vista Community Park had potential to become something more -- a community garden. First, the nonprofit presented their idea to local community groups to get neighbors' buy-in for the project. Volunteers then worked to transform the space, adding raised garden beds which are available to low- and moderate-income residents to rent. The garden serves a neighborhood considered to be a food desert and Bayside Community Center uses the garden to grow produce for families in need. The space also serves as a gathering space for neighbors, many of whom live in nearby affordable housing complexes. Additionally, organizers say the garden spurred similar projects in other city parks, leading the City of San Diego to consider streamlining its policies governing new community gardens.