Wilmington, DE

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2024

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: Gardening offers proven benefits for memory and mental health, yet many older adults struggle with mobility and strength, and residents in underserved neighborhoods lack access to fresh food. To address this, the organization purchased 105 ergonomic tools like telescopic rakes and kneeling benches, making gardening safer and more accessible. Volunteers, including 15 older adults, helped maintain community gardens and urban farms, fostering social connections and improving well-being. One volunteer said the new kneeling pads made gardening much more comfortable, enabling her to keep contributing.

Woodbridge, VA

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2018

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: To create a vibrant public space at the Woodbridge Senior Center, Keep Prince William Beautiful created a vegetable garden onsite. Organizers worked to repair raised beds -- designed to be accessible for gardeners of all ages and abilities -- and fill them with vegetable plants. Additionally, they installed a seating area at the Center's front entrance. All plants grown in the space are native to Northern Virginia and include pollinator-friendly species. The Center plans to cook with vegetables from the garden and organizers hope the improvements give older adults a beautiful outdoor gathering space.

Providence, RI

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2019

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: Amos House, which serves unhoused and unemployed people and those living in poverty, developed a volunteer-managed garden to provide fresh ingredients for the organization's soup kitchen. Amos House installed four raised garden beds and two containers for growing herbs. The organization relied on labor from participants in its carpentry program and planted seeds donated by a local farm. Following construction of the 900-square-foot garden, Amos House recruited 20 volunteers age 50 and older to tend the garden. In the summer of 2019, the garden yielded produce valued at 6,500, which they used to prepare 15,000 meals. Residents of Amos House's shelter programs participate in gardening and harvesting, which project organizers say represented an important social activity during the COVID-19 pandemic.