BlueGrassRoots: Seedleaf aims to teach residents to plant in ‘food deserts’

Behind the black chain-link fence of the London Ferrel Community Garden on East Third Street, Seedleaf grows more than just vegetables.
 
“We’ve come to realize that we do better when we grow gardeners instead of just growing food,” said Ryan Koch, executive director of Seedleaf, a nonprofit community gardening organization.
 

 
The program works to bring fruits and vegetables to Lexington’s “food deserts,” areas where nutritional foods aren’t readily available, through educating would-be green thumbs.
 
There are six areas designated as food deserts in Lexington and Fayette County, and most of these are in the downtown area and around the University of Kentucky Campus, according to the USDA’s new Food Desert Locater.
 
“Seedleaf’s focus is on food justice, looking at food access as a social justice component,” said Rebecca Self, Seedleaf’s education director.

The nonprofit started in 2007 after members of the non-denominational church Communality discovered their gardening project was producing more food than they could handle after the garden’s first growing season.

“It went pretty well, and we thought with a little structure we could do better,” said Koch.

So, Koch developed an advisory board from the church’s best volunteers and Seedleaf was born. For the next two years, Seedleaf concentrated on growing friendship and vegetables, and giving away healthy food, Koch said.

When Self joined Seedleaf as educational director in 2009, she immediately focused on teaching Lexington about healthy eating habits and local produce.

The challenge, though, isn’t getting people to understand that local foods are better for the environment, economy and their health. It’s making sure they have access to those foods and teaching them to cook healthy meals with the produce, Self said.

“This is really about equal rights, and equal access to fresh food,” she added.

To help accomplish this, Seedleaf partners with Lexington’s Parks and Recreation Department, local schools and other community groups to make the nonprofit’s 12 “free pick” community gardens field trip and hands-on educational destinations. Seedleaf also reaches out through cooking classes in schools and community centers, Koch said.

Florence Crittenton Home, a shelter and school for troubled girls, is one of the places Seedleaf combines all of its resources to promote healthy eating education. Seedleaf works with the school on a three-part course of instruction about growing and cooking local foods.

Koch spends most of his time there working in the garden; Seedleaf tends with the students, and Self works with the girls — some of them pregnant or already mothers — teaching them to cook with the garden’s produce.

“A huge component of that education is in the kitchen,” Koch said. “Every Tuesday morning, Rebecca’s got the girls cooking something that we harvested that week.”

“The real thing we’re doing is just trying to get them to incorporate seasonal vegetables into their diets,” Self added.

The third part of the program comes in classroom instruction where students learn the science of nutrition and how food is grown, said Jennifer Connor, Florence Crittenton Home director. Many students are also working on personalized cook books full of recipes they’ve tried and know they like.

“I feel like there’s a lot of practical application when it comes to what we’re doing in the garden,” Conner said.

“I also really like the group dynamic that happens,” she added. “Educationally, it’s a group effort that happens in the garden. It helps with all those areas: nutrition, life skills and science and how they get along in and out of the classroom.”

By Ben Cannon

ben@kyforward.com

BlueGrassRoots is an occasional series that looks at local initiatives, how they start and why they’re important. To suggest a story, e-mail news@kyforward.com or ben@kyforward.com.