Grand Rapids, MI

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2026

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: A housing community for older adults will expand its garden by adding raised beds and a shaded structure. These updates will make gardening easier, improve access to fresh food and create more opportunities for residents to gather outdoors.

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.

Bronx, NY

AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2018

Project Category: Community Gardens

Description: The Morris Community Garden had suffered years of neglect, and the abandoned site was overrun with rats. To breathe new live into the space, BronxWorks restored the garden, located near a senior center and three schools. They renamed the space Bean Morris Garden to memorialize a young man from the neighborhood. To welcome people of all ages and abilities, the nonprofit added accessible seating to the space, along with raised garden beds. Since the renovation, residents of all ages have volunteered to tend to the plots. Organizers say the amenity offers an important outdoor gathering space for the community.