Growing Together: Regenerating Community in Nashville, Tennessee

The Nashville Food Project is a community organization that works to bring people together to grow, cook and share nourishing food, with the goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger in Nashville, Tennessee. Lauren Bailey, Director of Garden Programs, oversees all community gardens and the market garden program, Growing Together. These programs provide land for people to connect to the practice of growing food, whether they are New American gardeners who cultivate using native agricultural practices or gardeners who want to reconnect with the practice.

Interview conducted by Emmett McKinney of CoLab Radio.

Could you tell us about the New American Gardens project, and its genesis and role within the Nashville Food Project?

Lauren Bailey: It’s important for me to give the history of it. The New American Gardens project we have today was actually started through a federal grant supporting the Food Project. In 2013, I worked with another organization, the Center for Refugees and Immigrants in Tennessee, which was the lead organization on the federal grant.

There were a lot of people who happened to be in the right room at the right time who were ready to start moving towards finding land access for recently arrived refugees. And it kind of all culminated. The Center for Refugees and Immigrants connected to the Food Project and connected to another non-profit called Nashville Grown, and those were the three partners, along with the Tennessee Foreign Language Institute, that were the original partners on that grant.

That grant provided the funds for the establishment of what is now our Wedgewood Garden, what formerly was our Blackmun Road Garden, and our Growing Together program, which is a market garden program for new American families.

I think the important thing for me to mention is that it wasn’t really a novel or a new idea. It had been talked about a lot by others in the community before this group of people came on. We had a combination of efforts, privilege, and time to make the New American Gardens we have today.

As far as our overall vision and its importance within the Food Project, we have a vision for “communities to choose.” When we say that, we mean everyone has the food that they want and need through a just and sustainable food system. And we acknowledge that there has never been a just or sustainable food system, so we know that this is much bigger than what we are currently doing. But we feel like community gardens are a part of reimagining and building out that reality.

Nashville is a diverse city with a lot of immigrants from East Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. What role do the New American Gardens play in supporting that community?

Lauren Bailey: The gardens respond to the fact that there are a lot of communities that come to the United States, and food is part of their cultural heritage. There are certain crops that you can’t find at farmers markets or at grocery stores.  The gardens really provide a space for people to practice something that they know. Some of the people who garden with us have told us that when they came to the United States, they didn’t think they’d have access to land. So, many people, especially the elders that we have worked with, were excited to reconnect to the practice of growing food and share it with younger generations. 

Because of the requirements to be proficient in English, many elders are underemployed and have difficulty finding a job to support themselves and their families. And so the gardens have provided a space for them to do something they know, grow food, and provide for their families. For many elders, the timing of resettlement into a new country and way of life presents a unique, and often challenging experience.

For many elders, the timing of resettlement into a new country and way of life presents a unique, and often challenging experience. I recall this one gentleman, Krishna, who was not able to work outside the home, and he took real pride in being able to contribute fresh produce to support his family.  I’m sure you can imagine what it feels like to be able to bring something to the table.

I am curious about food and earth as a medium for social change. There are lots of community programs in health, education, and employment that serve a similar mission. What is it about food that specifically serves this goal of power and dignity?

Lauren Bailey: I think for the people that are in our gardens currently, it’s being able to apply ways of knowing and ways of being to a new context, a new home. We hope that our gardens provide a space for people to do something that brings a sense of home and a sense of connection. Around the world, farmers are not a group of people who are uplifted and recognized for their contribution. Many of the people who are part of our program were farmers in their home countries. This is a space for folks to practice what they know and feed themselves and their families.

There’s also a lot of power in the cultural exchange that occurs in the gardens.  Our city is rich with diverse ideas and cultural heritages, and it is a beautiful thing to see how that manifests in relationship to growing food. The gardens showcase the different ways of growing and the different types of crops that can be grown. Have you ever tried a pumpkin shoot before? I had no idea that it was edible. In the same way that folks come together around food by sharing recipes, gardeners come together around how and what they grow.

Being connected to the Earth itself is powerful in itself. The gardens are places where people can connect to the Earth and each other. There’s the physical aspect of labor, which is a lot of work. But there’s also the exercise, being out in the fresh air, and the community aspect where people get to see people they may not see in their everyday lives. Or just talk about the issues that they’re having in their gardens and ways to deal with them.  I see the gardens as a space where so much can happen, and we can’t necessarily quantify it all, or capture it all.

I’m curious about your personal path. What brought you to the Nashville Food Project?

Lauren Bailey: I came to the Food Project after this grant was finished. And ultimately what keeps me working here, what keeps me involved in this work, and what led me here, is just a belief in the power of growing food. I see it as an act of resilience. And I believe in building a just and sustainable food system.

When I moved to Nashville, I came to learn how to grow food. It was a period of my life when I was searching, and I felt whole as I reconnected to the Earth.  That experience was so profound for me. And a series of experiences opened my eyes to the fact that not everyone has that access.

So, I believe that providing access to land is so important, and I believe growing food in community lends itself to be able to practice the ways of being that we want to see in the world. You have to collaborate with one another and it requires patience and trust and a commitment to each other. You have to share resources and space. It’s this really beautiful and, at times, chaotic expression--  a microcosm of the city. Because you’re sharing resources and all trying to do the things you need to do for yourself in that space. And, at the same time, your work overlaps and you have the opportunity to share stories and laughter. You come together to figure out how to tackle issues with pests or other challenges that present themselves.

I really believe in the vision we have at the Nashville Food Project. We haven’t done everything right, and I imagine that there are a lot of ways to improve what we do – but one thing about the Food Project is that we are committed to getting out there and trying things and practicing. One of our core organizational values is learning. We are continually getting our hands dirty, then taking time to reflect and apply what we learn so that we can continue to evolve. That’s the reason I come back every day to work.

You used the phrase a just and sustainable food system a few times. What does that look like, and how do you see the Food Project sparking more systemic change within Middle Tennessee or beyond?

Lauren Bailey: So I think we are really on the cusp of just understanding ourselves and what our role in food justice is. I am really inspired by Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm in New York and in how that farm is living out this vision for a just system.

Part of the work of the food project is disrupting and changing the cycle of the food that is being wasted, and trying to deal  with where we are at in our current reality. We know that there’s tons of food waste and simultaneously, there’s people who are hungry.  Our work is to create better pathways for people to access food. Another way we tackle that is by ensuring that folks have access to land to grow food for themselves. We know that is just as important in changing the food system.

There’s a lot left for us to discover as far as the food project’s role in bigger, more systemic issues, but as we are doing things with our partners and different stakeholders, there are ways we are pushing the conversation and boundaries of the status quo in Nashville. My hope is that as we keep tackling those things, there will be other things that open up that we can take on and challenge, and be part of a larger conversation.

I think there is a lot yet to do. And sometimes it can be overwhelming to know where our place is in all of that. But, I think right now, as an organization, we are really focused on our internal practices and on building up our staff capacity. I think we are taking on some of the systemic issues from the inside out: how do we work to be an anti-racist organization and how does that then flow into our programming?

There’s a whole ecosystem of people working on food issues in Nashville. To what extent do you think about your work as one part of a larger network, versus meeting a need that few others are?

Lauren Bailey: We totally look at ourselves as part of a bigger picture. I think through our various partnerships, we have a unique niche in how we are working to address food access. There are a lot of other organizations working towards food access and land access and gardens. One of the hard things about this work is that there are so many different people doing so many different things.

I don’t know if you have seen it, but we recently had a community food assessment. Which was part of Mayor Barry’s public-private partnerships grant. And the farmer’s market proposed to get this assessment done. One of the main findings was a lack of communication. And that’s a hard thing to overcome when everybody is actively doing a lot of work. Trying to find additional time to organize and communicate and come up with systems and processes for how you work collaboratively takes a lot of time. It’s definitely worth it. It just requires time and commitment. 

[This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Read more about the Nashville Food Project’s Growing Together program and consider supporting them here.]

About the Author:

Emmett McKinney is a Producer for CoLab Radio, where he works to amplify community narratives. As a Master in City Planning student (2020), Emmett works to ground policies aimed “sustainability” and “resilience” in communities’ lived experiences. His current research focuses on transportation and water infrastructure, and how equity and justice are integrated into data-driven planning. Outside of CoLab, Emmett can be found running, drinking coffee, and dancing to reggaeton.