Building Food Resilience through Urban Container Gardening from the Comfort of Home

On September 22, 2024, the Harborkeepers conducted an urban gardening workshop with 10 members of the community at a senior living complex in East Boston. The team started by engaging in discussions about food insecurity, resilience, and sustainability. Participants in this workshop were excited to engage and shared memories of gardens of their youth and described challenges of similar access in downsized accommodations.

Each participant received soil, biodegradable containers, and a variety of other containers that they could transplant the vegetables to when they start to grow. For this workshop the team chose spinach, carrots, basil, peppers and green beans to grow. The participants were thrilled with the choices. They used popsicle sticks to indicate which seedling was which, then watered the soil, asked many questions, and received materials to take home to maintain their garden.

As part of the study, a member of the Harborkeepers will be tracking the results of the growth of the gardens, what can be done differently, and any other feedback their participants have. Every participant understood that they may not be successful in growing an indoor garden and that it takes work, however they were grateful that they had a voice in the process and couldn’t wait to see the results. The Harborkeepers will also be conducting more workshops through the end of 2024, with a wider ranger of the community.