Ep. 36: Community Gardens with Jessica Letteer

Have you ever dreamed of starting a community garden?

Our guest this week is Jessica Letteer, who founded the Wilkes-Barre Area Community Gardens five years ago and kicked off a local movement of soil building and community gardening in an area marked by poverty, blighted soil, and food deserts. Jess’ home in Pennsylvania’s Wyoming Valley bears the contamination left behind by abandoned coal mines, and services and infrastructure are chronically under-resourced. But she and a small group of other volunteers reached out to their city council, solicited donations, and started a program that now grows and distributes food, teaches regenerative agriculture skills, and puts on community events—all for free.

Longtime listeners will know that our co-host, Erin Alladin, also founded a community garden: Garden@Kimbourne Community Permaculture Project in Toronto, Ontario. In this episode, she and Jess compare notes on the steps they each took to start their projects and how they and their fellow volunteers kept them going. Jess also tells us about the process of establishing a nonprofit, about the other community organizations her group has partnered with, the ways they're funding the garden, and—of course—all the incredible projects they have lined up for the future.

Learn More:

The Wilkes-Barre Area Community Gardens Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/wilkesbarreacg/

Organizations Named in this Episode

• Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation: https://epcamr.org/home/ 

• Food Dignity: https://fooddignitymovement.org/ 

• Rising Tide Wellness: https://risingtide-wellness.org/ 

• WIC: https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic 

The Horti Awards

Vote for Wait Like a Seed here! Scroll to the very bottom and select it from the Books drop-down menu. You don’t have to vote in every category.

Comments? Feedback? Want your garden question to be featured in a future Q&A segment? Email us, reach out over social media, or get Q&A priority by supporting us on Patreon.

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Credits

Website Design and Illustration by Sophia Alladin

Intro and Outro Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/when-my-ukulele-plays
License code: GWOIMMBAS15FG6PH

Timestamps

00:14 Introduction to Jessica Letteer
02:12 Introduction to Wilkes-Barre Area Community Gardens
03:35 How Wilkes-Barre Area Community Gardens Got Their Start
08:19 How Garden@Kimbourne Got its Start
09:58 Water Break: Wait Like a Seed and the Horti Awards
10:33 Concerns about Crime and Community Gardens
12:67 Healing the Community through Gardening
13:55 Becoming a Nonprofit
15:01 Partnering with Other Organizations
17:50 Food Dignity: Paying Farmers, Feeding People for Free
19:55 More Energy and Infrastructure Projects in the Gardens
21:55 Why Is Running All This With You???
25:36 Funding!
26:44 Gardening in a Former Coal Town
32:27 Creating an Accessible Garden for People with Disabilities
35:15 What's Next for Wilkes-Barre Community Gardens
36:18 Find The Garden Community Online
37:00 Shout-Outs
38:58 Outro and Contact Us