Name of contact person: Ann-Meredith Wootton

Community Garden Address: 2781 Sage St, New Orleans, LA, 70122 

The Edgewood Heights neighborhood in New Orleans, LA, is made up of 50 families, predominantly Black grandmothers (60-90 years old) and young Garifuna and Latinx families.

Our community is located far from grocery stores, with just a couple gas stations and corner stores within 10 blocks walking distance. The closest grocery stores are Rouses by Lake Pontchartrain or Walmart on the edge of Gentilly & New Orleans East – both are long distance by bus. Most community members do not have cars and are elderly or families with young children. Transportation by bus back and forth with groceries (especially in intense heat, storms, or cold) is a challenge. Most grandmothers in our communities have small kitchen gardens in their backyards, and we collectively share the bounty, alongside seeds and cuttings. One of our neighbors has to catch rides across the river, over 45 minutes away, to the Navy base, to access a free grocery program for retired veterans, and many other neighbors rely on leftovers from Sunday church meals to feed them through part of the week. Earlier this year, neighbors advocated for a new grocery store to be built on a huge empty lot in the neighborhood, but instead a wealthy developer is now building a large funeral home on the site. Deep Down Roots is even more invested in nourishing life-giving resources within our community.

In terms of language justice access, a great deal of the local food justice access resources are also monolingual English, while many members in our community are primarily Spanish speaking. We continue to provide multilingual programming, outreach, and community skill shares within our Deep Down Roots (Raices Profundas) gardens.

In addition to our direct Edgewood Heights neighborhood, we also continue to build with our larger

New Orleans community around food sovereignty, healing justice, and environmental justice issues.

Thus far, the garden has been able to feed over 1500 community members under the community garden grant. Food Distribution was as follows:

• Community Medicine Making Days
  • supported Alternate Roots community event (250 people)
• Community Medic Skill share / Hurricane Prep supported Delta Rootz 6 weeklong training (150)
• Oral History Project (50)
  • supported 25-hour long interviews, and 10 group visioning sessions (providing food & tea/medicine from garden)
• Bancha Lenguas – Language Justice Training (100 people)
  • Support of a 3-day intensive language justice training (providing herbal tea from

garden, & medicinal mushroom honeys)

• Cooperation New Orleans (50 people)
  • supported healing justice community event (providing healing tea with herbs

fresh from the garden)

• Healing Justice Community care packages (100)
  • provided healing care packages to elders and disabled members of our community with herbs fresh from the garden (huge bundles of turmeric for elders with joint pain, trauma healing salves for healers recovering from surgery, grief teas for neighbors who lost dear ones, immune boosting herbs for neighbors who were sick, bouquets of edible herbs and flowers to brighten people’s days)
• Community Garden Days (250+)
  • shared herbs, fruit & vegetables with our neighbors – ongoing Community Fridge (500+)
  • Dozens of community members come by every week to gather food from the community fridge. When we fill the fridge, it is empty by the next morning. Ongoing.
  • Community Garden Skill shares (50)

There have been several partners who have contributed toward the success of our community garden project, such as: LSU AG Center – collaborated on series of community garden skill shares (see below), Bancha Lenguas – collaborated on series of community garden skill shares, language justice training, mutual aid medic training, Cooperation New Orleans healing justice community events, and more.

Alternate Roots – collaborated on series of community care days, Delta Rootz – collaborated on mutual aid medic skill share series and community medicine making days and Societe des Champs Elysée – partnered together to provide community fridge to our neighbors.

Deep Down Roots also partnered with local jazz musician (Margie Perez) and the Societe des Champs Elysée (https://societedeschampselysee.org/) Mardi Gras krewe to build a community fridge. We also harvest fresh herbs, garlic, ginger, turmeric, and chili peppers to share with Societe des Champs Elysée when they cook weekly hot meals to share with houseless neighbors under the bridge. They receive wonderful donations of fresh produce and basic commodities from local food banks and grocery stores, but they rarely receive fresh herbs to season the healing comfort food they make to share with our community. Deep Down Roots focuses on growing herbal kitchen medicine – so we are able to share our delicious bounty with them to complement the other donations they received.

The land where the community garden is located is owned by Ann-Meredith Wootton and forever leased to Deep Down Roots. It is now formally registered as a farm with Farm Services Agency. They are currently working together with our neighbors to purchase the adjoining empty lots through FSA loan.

The purchase will allow us to establish a community trust where the gardens will be stewarded by and for the community forever.

There have been several garden related trainings that have taken place throughout the season. We have welcomed 10-20 people each month for a series of community garden skill shares together in collaboration with Anna Timmerman, our local agricultural extension agent from LSU. Several Deep Roots Community Garden Growing Kitchen Medicine workshops were held with partnering assistance to include:

• Building Soil – Composting & Soil Workshop Friday, September 27th @ 2-4pm
• Harvesting Fruits – Canning, Dehydrating & Fermentation Workshop Friday, October 11th @ 2- 4pm
  
• Sharing Seeds- Fruit Tree Pruning, Grafting, & Seed Saving Workshop Friday November 8th @ 2- 4pm

Deep Down Roots – Community Garden 2781 Sage St.

Language Justice Interpretation In both Spanish & English provided by Bancha Languas

Disability justice solidarity requests @: DeepDownRoots@ProtonMail.com

Support from Community Resources Connections & USDA-NRCS Community Garden Grants & collaboration LSU AgCenter.