Growing Home Looks Toward The Future With New Projects

In early January, Derrick Rose donated money for Growing Home’s Rose Garden project, which will enable the urban farming organization to grow pollinators and roses in the garden at the front of the farm. PHOTO PROVIDED BY GROWING HOME.
In early January, Derrick Rose donated money for Growing Home’s Rose Garden project, which will enable the urban farming organization to grow pollinators and roses in the garden at the front of the farm. PHOTO PROVIDED BY GROWING HOME.

Growing Home Looks Toward The Future With New Projects

By Tia Carol Jones

Growing Home operates an urban farm on 1.7 acres of remediated farmland. That land had been previously zoned as light industrial and left as concrete lots in Englewood. During years of disinvestment in the community, it became abandoned. The lots were tested for contamination, remediated, capped and had two feet of compost placed on top. 

Growing Home was founded by Les Brown in 1993. It first began its social enterprise farming in Englewood in 2002. Growing Home’s Street Urban Farm, which is located at 5814 S. Wood, has been fully operational since 2009. 

The farmland serves as an activation point. Each year, 35,000 pounds of fresh produce is grown there. Ezra Lee, Director of Urban Farms at Growing Home, said the most important part of that process is that new green space was added.

“A big thing is that we’re providing new green space in Englewood. We’re making sure that land is being used,” Lee said.

Growing Home also has its training program, which uses the farm as a tool to give people general employment skills, with the hope those skills can transition to all types of employment and careers. The paid training program lasts 12 weeks, with Lee and his team working with participants on the farm in the morning for four hours and in the afternoon, participants receive job training curriculum with the job training team.

Lee said that urban farming is unique because it gives Growing Home the opportunity to introduce people to things that might be new for them, as well as to get people to be engaged with a food source for them, deliver healthy produce to the community and have a place of engagement and enrichment.

Last Spring, the City of Chicago provided Growing Home with a $5 million grant. That funding contributed to Growing Home’s capital campaign. Throughout the last few years, the organization has developed plans for a two-wing building that will house a farm store, café, commercial kitchen, administration offices, a larger classroom an expanded processing center and indoor growing space. The hope is the expansion project will break ground this year.

Earlier this month, there was an announcement about the Rose Garden project. Growing Home was connected with Derrick Rose, who contributed towards a front garden. The garden will be a rose garden and a pollinator garden. Lee said the Rose Garden project fits in with the mission.

“Urban farming, I think, has a responsibility in a number of different ways, one to produce a lot of food, but two, to create green spaces, green islands in the city. With that, we try to find spaces on the farm to have pollinator habitats,” he said. Those pollinator habitats helps pollinate the food that is grown. Also, the Rose Garden will be located in front of the farm, and the hope is that Growing Home is a welcoming and inviting space for the community.

While the main growing season takes place between May and November, in February, starts the first on-site cohort, with 25 new production assistants being introduced to urban farming.

For more information about Growing Home, visit www.growinghomeinc.org.


Latest Stories

Latest Podcast

100 Black Men of Chicago, Chairman David Day