The United States Botanic Garden, the oldest continuously operating public garden in the United States, and the American Public Gardens Association, the leading professional organization for the field of public horticulture, recently awarded funding to 26 public gardens and their community partners across the country to support their work in urban agriculture, food-growing and related education work. The Botanical Garden of the Ozarks was the only garden in the state to receive part of the $445,600 in funding from the Urban Agriculture Resilience Program.
With this funding, the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks will enhance its Little Sprouts Garden beds, which serve as an educational opportunity for children to learn about the plant life cycle from seed to harvest. The produce from the garden is then redistributed through Seeds That Feed to those in the local community who are food insecure.
The Urban Agriculture Resilience Program seeks to leverage the strength of public gardens working with their community partners, be they schools, urban farms, nonprofit organizations or otherwise, to integrate urban food growing and urban agriculture education while addressing local food security challenges. This year, the program placed an emphasis on supporting collaborations involving smaller public gardens and organizations that showed a strong commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
UARP began in 2020, and since then has awarded 1.57 million to 80 collaborations in 30 states and D.C. These programs have grown and shared over 690,000 pounds of produce, distributed more than 260,000 seedlings and provided more than 46,000 hours of urban agriculture training to students, interns and trainees.
“The collaborations supported through this year’s Urban Agriculture Resilience Program demonstrate many creative ways that urban agriculture can connect people and plants through food,” said USBG Executive Director Dr. Susan Pell. “We are thrilled to embark on a fifth year of supporting such vital urban food-growing programs across the country and to expand the existing Urban Agriculture Resilience Program community with these 26 new projects.”
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