Florida Organic Growers (FOG) has operated Gainesville Initiative for Tasty Gardens (GIFT Gardens)
since May 2008. Through the project, more than 200 sites in Alachua County have received raised-bed
vegetable gardens, including 166 residential family homes, nine schools, four churches and 21
organizations including behavioral clinics, group homes (homeless veterans, disabled youth, etc.),
youth organizations and low income housing developments. FOG requests support to develop a community
garden in the Porters Community, a part of Gainesville that for years has suffered from blight and
neglect. Dr. Watson Porter, a Canadian physician, established the Porters Community in Gainesville
in 1884 and sold lots exclusively to African Americans, many of whom worked in the nearby railroad
yards and industrial sites. During segregation, schools, shops and churches thrived in the all-black
neighborhood, which is located adjacent to downtown Gainesville. Since desegregation, residents
moved out and moved on, leaving boarded up homes commonly occupied by drug-dealers and the homeless.
Median household income in 2008 for the Porters Community, which consists of more than 75 percent
African-Americans, was $16,690, far below the City of Gainesville’s $35,005 average income,
demonstrating great need in this community for food assistance. The garden location in the Porters
Community is located less than a half mile from the Depot Park Project coordinated by the City of
Gainesville, which aims to clean-up contaminated former-industrial “brownfield” sites in the
heart of downtown Gainesville and promote sustainable, long-term economic development. The
centerpiece of the Depot Park Project will be a centrally located park that will contain walking
paths, boardwalks, interpretive exhibits, and native vegetation to recreate a natural North Florida
wetland landscape. As development brings businesses and visitors to downtown Gainesville, it is
important that low-income residents retain a connection to the Porters Community. FOG believes a
community garden has the potential to unite neighborhood residents and churches around the
production of food, and assist in retaining the African-American heritage so important to the
history of downtown Gainesville. The garden will also create learning and service opportunities for
the at-risk youth in the Porters Community, and will convert an empty lot in a very visible area of
town into a thriving garden that will instill a sense of pride in neighborhood residents. This is a
community-based request, and numerous community partners other than FOG will be instrumental to the
project, including Keep Alachua County Beautiful, which will assist in catalyzing the community and
volunteers who will be responsible for garden upkeep and harvest distribution; the City of
Gainesville, which is providing land for the garden; Shady Grove Primitive Baptist Church, a
congregation of primarily African-Americans organized in 1894 in the Porters Community; the Porters
Community Center, which hosts a large number of youth programs; the Black on Black Crime Task Force,
a cooperative effort between the Gainesville Police Department and citizens who work in partnership
to devise innovative strategies to reduce crime, particularly in disadvantaged areas of the
community; and Abundant Edible Landscapes, an edible landscaping company specializing in edible,
perennial landscaping.
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