Growing together leads
to a bountiful harvest

By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer

Prisoners, primary school students and planters don’t normally work together.
But with a single mission in mind, all three groups are combining to help City Harvest, an effort within the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Philadelphia Green program that helps get fresh produce to people in need.
Participants include students at Robert B. Pollock Elementary School in Pennypack and inmates at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on State Road.
City Harvest started a year ago and recently received a grant from the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation to fund efforts for the next two years.
"It’s a powerful web of connection to do something small, but significant in Philadelphia," said Joan Reilly, a director for Philadelphia Green. "There are many programs that do this, but they’re not knitted together as much as we are."
This season, program officials expect to see more than 9,000 pounds of food grown throughout the city. A group called SHARE (Self-Help and Resource Exchange) then distributes the fresh produce to 20 local food cupboards. Program officials estimate that about 380 families receive the fruits and vegetables each week.
Steveanna Wynn, director of SHARE, said that many low-income individuals can’t afford to incorporate fruits and vegetables into their daily diets.
"It pretty much doesn’t happen. Part of the reason is because there are not a lot of grocery stores where people have access to fresh produce. This is right out of the ground," she said.
Catholic Social Services, which is based in Frankford, and the Northeast Churches Food Cupboards, located at St. John Lutheran Church in Mayfair, are two of the local food cupboards that receive produce through the program.
Larry Thum, director of the cupboard at St. John’s, said he gets the produce from Fox Chase Farm about once a week. "It’s great, because normally we use non-perishable foods," he said. "The people don’t have a lot of access to fresh produce. We haven’t been able to get funding to do that."
City Harvest relies on about 100 community gardeners to grow fruit and vegetables for the program. Most of the participating gardens have secured their land through the Neighborhood Gardens Association/A Philadelphia Land Trust, a non-profit group that helps fund the purchase of land for permanent use as gardens.
City Harvest members also travel to the gardens to distribute recipe cards and hold cooking workshops to teach individuals how to prepare the produce. They tailor the demonstrations to the different cultures within the community.
"If it’s a Latino community, we use seasonings and herbs that are familiar to the diet," Reilly said.
Pollock has given a green thumbs up to the program by growing plants in Pollock Park, a garden they started about five years ago. Students tend to 10 beds of fruits and vegetables.
"The kids planted two or three bulbs last week," said teacher Anita Schumer. "It’s a really neat project."
At the correctional facility, 16 inmates help raise the seedlings in the greenhouse and garden on State Road, which had been closed in recent years due to lack of funding.
Johanne Steigerwald, the social work supervisor at the prison, helps choose the participants, most of whom are in re-entry.
"It helps the inmates, it helps the people in the community and helps all the other people who get produce," said city prisons commissioner Leon King.
The inmates develop work skills, pride and positive attitudes that they showcase each fall when they host a dinner prepared from produce they’ve helped raise.
To increase their job skills, City Harvest added landscape and hardscape training classes to this year’s gardening curriculum. The workshops are hosted by representatives of EP Henry Corp. and will teach inmates skills they can use to get jobs once they are released.
Steigerwald hopes to cultivate the program by creating a meditation garden, planting fruit trees and painting a mural at the prison.
King said that one of the inmates who participated in the gardening program last year is already putting his gardening skills to good use by tending to a garden in his own community.
"He probably planted a garden instead of picking up a gun and robbing you," King said. ••
For additional information on how you can get involved in the City Harvest Program, visit the group’s Web site at www.pennsylvaniahorticulturalsociety.org
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com