The Friends of Birmingham Botanical Gardens is pleased to announce the launch of our inaugural Rooted in Community awards program. We would like to partner with organizations that want to serve and benefit their local communities through grassroots projects.

Rooted in Community serves as a platform for participants to actively contribute to enhancing their local areas and beautifying the communities where they live and work. Hear from our pilot participants below!

 By Basil Terhune

On the once-vacant grounds of the old Woodrow Wilson Elementary School, neighbors talk and tend to their garden plots. For almost a decade since the school’s closure in 2008, its west Birmingham neighborhood struggled to find a use for the building. Now, with a renovated interior and outdoor growing spaces, the property thrives as a social hub and learning facility.

The school’s new goal is to provide a different kind of education—teaching the community self-sufficiency through urban agriculture. Through the work of the Bush Hills Connections, a nonprofit that works alongside the Bush Hills neighborhood association, the space has been transformed into a community garden, orchard, and USDA-certified urban farm that produces 50,000 pounds of produce annually. The 501(c)(3) utilizes the land to promote community resilience, cultivate environmental consciousness, and teach area residents about sustainable farming.

Caption: Bush Hill residents help plant seedlings in the community garden.

But before Bush Hills Connections formed in 2017, access to food was limited. “We knew we were in a food desert,” said Joanice Thompson, president of Bush Hill Connections and board member at the Friends of Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Noting the lack of grocery stores nearby, residents began asking themselves, “What can we do to get some fresh vegetables in the neighborhood?” So they went to the drawing board.

“We started with the community garden, where people could come in and get plots and plant themselves,” said Joanice.” Then we moved to getting the whole grounds of the old Wilson School and planning an urban farm.”

“It’s got to start with the community—with the people that live, work, and play in the neighborhood.
It must start with these people,” —Joanice Thompson

By engaging people in hands-on experience, the organization is taking steps to directly combat food insecurity. Revitalizing the historic building preserves the neighborhood’s connection to its local history—new growth sprouting from old roots.

Bush Hills Connections was chosen as one of eleven recipients for the Birmingham Botanical Gardens’ Rooted in Community grant program, awarded this past fall. The additional funds ensure that their community can continue to grow.

“The $500 that we got helped us because we need seeds and containers to store the seedlings,”  Joanice said, explaining how sprouts started in their hoop house can then be planted in the garden or used to decorate the courtyard, a space used for social gatherings.

Grown from seed, the urban farm produces a bounty of over 15 types of fresh vegetables such as okra, squash, sweet potatoes, beans, collards, and corn. The harvest is distributed throughout the community and shared with the wider Birmingham area.

“We have people that come from all over the city of Birmingham to get it—we don’t limit it,” Joanice said, “but our priority is the Bush Hills neighbors, especially our seniors. We try to make sure that they get first dibs.”

Any excess produce is donated to local food banks and soup kitchens—another way to give back to the community and foster connection. The work put into the organization is for the community, by the community, and it’s thanks to the contributions of Bush Hills residents that the urban farm can thrive. One such resident is garden manager April Williams, a master gardener who happily shares her knowledge. Her husband Nathaniel Williams also contributes, providing his own expertise and even equipment from his farm in Tuscaloosa.

“We call his tractor Mr. Bush Hills,” Joanice laughed. “He just likes coming out and helping us. He really sets it up and everything—shows us how to plant and helps take care of it.” 

She notes how crucial it is for this involvement to be bottom-up. “It’s got to start with the community—with the people that live, work, and play in the neighborhood. It must start with these people,” she said. “It can’t be just people from the outside wanting to do it. You’ve got to have the community wanting it itself.”

Joanice thinks that the Birmingham Botanical Gardens can be a place to foster connection and inspire action. “It could be a great link. It could be the hub for community engagement,” she said.

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