Support of non-profit inner city gardening and blight removal
Our "boots on the ground” partners live and work in the neighborhoods they serve and we support their efforts with thousands of free vegetable seedlings, gratis tractor work, and technological support. Several times per season we transport thousands of vegetable seedlings to help these groups provide as much fresh, free food to the hungry as possible. No garden row sits idle if we can help it!
Drew Transition Center, Detroit, Michigan
Our partnership with the Drew goes back many years.
Drew is a pre-vocational center in the Detroit Public School system with nearly 600 special education students aged 18 to 26. Award winning educator and former Row-By-Row board member, Michael Craig, runs a horticulture program on campus with the goal of helping his students become more functionally independent. His students grow seedlings for us, and we for them! Along with providing for the local community, Mr. Craig’s students also sell some of their produce to restaurants, gaining entrepreneurial experience along the way.
We like to think of Drew Transition Center and our local Glen Lake School as ‘sister schools’. Students from Glen Lake have started tens of thousands of seedlings for Row-by-Row and we take lots down to the Horticulture students of Michael Craig. We’re all in this together!
These two separate initiatives are doing essential work in some of the hardest hit and still recovering parts of Detroit. They are the main recipients of our re-located “Big Glen Garden” assets (truck, trailer, raised bed and garden infrastructure….).
Avalon Village and Parker Village have been growing food and community pride, and battling blight for several years now in the same neighborhood that our own massive “Big Glen Garden” once graced. It’s an uphill battle that they are dedicated to winning and we are committed to helping any way we can. Together, they have received over 300 of our raised beds to grow food in the Highland Park food desert.
These two important organizations have been a stabilizing force in Detroit’s North End. Row-by-Row provides seedlings in spring and summer and tech equipment and other aid as needed. The transformation they have achieved in their once blighted neighborhoods has been amazing.