“I always wanted to grow my own food,” Yasmin Van, VINES gardener, told us. As a child she would visit her aunt in Georgia and watch as she tended a garden next to her home. “I remember the corn we would eat out of it, and the pecan and pomegranate trees,” she recalls. She grew up in New York City, “We had parks,” she says, “but to be connected to the Earth in that way, especially as a little kid, was transformative. As I got older, I got away from that.”
The Build a Garden program has reconnected her. With garden bags right on their back porch Yasmin’s sons got into growing, and of course eating, the food as well.
The Build a Garden program also had another unexpected surprise. “I spent more time on my back porch and got more sunshine in my house,” says Yasmin, “I’ve lived here 15 years but last summer was the first time since I moved in that I kept my backdoor open because I wanted to see the garden.” Now that they have a year of experience under their belts Yasmin and her sons are looking forward to learning and growing again this year.
Read more about what Yasmin & her family took away from their first year of Build a Garden here.
(photo by @alejandrolandestoy)
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