Growing Healthier Communities with Food Well Alliance

Supporting over 300 local urban farms, community gardens and orchards, Food Well Alliance is a major player in our local food systems. With a focus on eating local, and eating healthy, Food Well Alliance is making a big impact for food insecure families and we’re proud to support their work. A chat with Flannery Pearson-Clarke, Food Well Alliance’s Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator, tells us more about how they do this good work + how we can help local food-producing spaces thrive.

TL;DR – Sign up here to volunteer + support the nearest garden, orchard or farm to you.

Claire: So Flannery – today, we’re here at Norris Lake Community Garden, which I understand to be the only community garden on an island in Atlanta… that we know of, anyway! This place is cool – please tell us about it.

Flannery: Yeah! Norris Lake is one of about 150 community gardens that we work with around Metro Atlanta. This one was started about 5 years ago – community members cleared it out and built a garden. Food Well Alliance has been with them since the beginning. We’ve had volunteers help with the installation and awarded a grant that the garden has put towards other projects. Now, in addition to volunteer workdays, we’re doing a donation orchard planting with them. We’re adding about 20 fruit trees and bushes today. It’s a cool spot – there are some unique things that come with being on an island… There's not a lot of foot traffic, and it comes with the added bonus of navigating how to get materials to and from the garden, which makes volunteers all the more valuable here.

Claire: Food Well Alliance has been on the scene in Atlanta since 2015, and you’ve been there from the beginning. Talk to us about how this organization got off the ground.

Flannery: Yeah! Bill Bolling, from the Atlanta Community Food Bank, and Jim Kennedy from the Cox Foundation, were very instrumental in beginning. When we started, there was a vision of supporting food producing spaces in Atlanta. The Food Bank had an existing community garden program dating back to the 1990s, that supported people in gardens growing food, and Food Well Alliance helped to expand that. The original push was helping to fund spaces, farmers and gardens, and now we’ve moved into funding orchards too. And as we’ve developed, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback that funding is a great way to help, but programming and other resources are needed too. So that means hands-on support, and also technical guidance like workshops and programming.

Claire: So let me get this straight – Food Well Alliance supports community gardens and urban farms. And orchards! Where are these spaces?

Food Well Alliance:  We are really lucky – we get to work around the 5 county metro area, there are so many incredible community gardens, farms and orchards. They are run by incredible people, and they have a lot of community support. If you’re interested in getting involved, OR in finding out if your school or community space might be a good fit for an orchard… we can help! Email gardens@foodwellalliance.org to get connected with spaces – there’s usually something near you, even if you don’t know it yet, and we can help you find out where it is.

And, we also have a City Ag planning program. We’re working with the cities of East Point, Alpharetta and Jonesboro. That’s a way for city officials to get engaged in the planning process + help create spaces in cities for agriculture, in different ways that could mean supporting farmer’s markets or even creating new spaces.

Claire: Can you tell us about the impact of the gardens + farms on the Atlanta area? Where does the food go, and how does distribution work?

Food Well Alliance: In the community garden, people often grow for themselves. Many gardens also participate in the Plant-A-Row program, so food grown goes to local pantries who then distribute it to their clients. We collect data on how much is being donated, and it actually averages to be about 100,000 pounds per year. In 2022, it was over 200,000 pounds! It’s very impactful, and stays super local – it’s usually going down the street. Sometimes, the garden exists because it’s known that a nearby food pantry needs extra support, and other times it’s just a happy collaboration. Some gardens even do direct distribution from their space. Food Well Alliance’s role with this is to encourage gardens to participate in this program, and provide tools, resources and education, like free seedlings and seeds. We’re big on supporting this program. And, to clarify – you don’t have to be a member of a community garden to participate in this! The home gardener can grow + donate food, too!

Urban farms are typically selling food, at a farmer’s market for example. Our partner farms are often bringing fresh food into spaces that didn’t have access to produce before, so they’re an important part of the local food system too.

“The food system should be accessible to everyone.”

— Flannery Pearson-Clarke, Food Well Alliance

Claire: In addition to the support going directly to the gardens + farms, you all have a lot of programming for general community members, right? Like resources for the non-farmer, who just wants to grow at home?

Food Well Alliance: Absolutely. It’s actually in our mission statement that the food system be accessible to everyone, and that everyone has a role to play in that. Not everyone is going to become a farmer. There’s not space in Atlanta for everyone to be! But there’s a role for everyone to play in a home garden, a community garden, learning more and supporting farmers – even just coming out to a farmer’s market. We’ve got our workshop series, Plant. Eat. Repeat, which is in partnership with Atlanta Botanical Gardens. And that’s really fun, we just did a workshop on how to grow herbs for teas. These actually take place at different community gardens, so it’s a great way to get out and learn. We do an annual free tree sale in February, and have a ton of online resources available on our website, like plant care guides and local seedling sale lists and local food-related events lists. We’re also doing a free compost giveaway for Earth Day that’s open to everyone!

Claire: Next month, Food Well Alliance is hosting the 8th annual Soil Fest. I have heard this event is amazing, and it’s for anyone remotely interested in plants and gardening. What can we expect from this event?

Food Well Alliance: Soil Festival - on May 6, 2023! - is our annual fundraiser to support our work providing resources + programming to farms, gardens and orchards around Atlanta. It’s a celebration of Atlanta’s agriculture and the healthy soil that makes it possible. This year we’re again partnering with WABE. We’ll have everything from workshops to a kids corner, a growers panel where some local farmers and gardeners will be talking about the importance of healthy soil for growing healthy food. There’ll be food trucks, a beer garden, and local juices. Tickets are online – but we also need volunteers to help us pull the event off! Volunteers get free admission and a t-shirt. 

Claire: What’s next after Soil Fest? Spring kicks off the growing season, I’m sure there’s TONS to do in the farms and gardens…

Food Well Alliance: The beautiful thing about Atlanta is that you can grow year round, so there’s always something to get involved with. As you can imagine, spring and summer are really big times for a lot of local growers, there’s a lot happening. We have ongoing volunteer workdays at gardens around the city. In the summer, we’ll be offering our next round of Plant. Eat. Repeat. gardening workshops.

Claire: Last question… what are you doing for Earth Day?!
Food Well Alliance: Working in gardens, we get to celebrate this every day! For Earth Day, we’re doing a free Earth Day Compost Giveaway  that Friday and Saturday, out of our warehouse at 970 Jefferson St, and that’s for anyone, not just farmers and professional gardeners! Earth Day also falls during Volunteer Appreciation Week, so we’re now calling it ‘Best Volunteers on Earth Day’.