The NCCC Comes to Richmond!

During the month of March, Richmond Grows Gardens had the opportunity to host a team from the National Civilian Community Corps, or NCCC, for two weeks.

What is NCCC?

NCCC is a full-time service program under AmeriCorps that covers lodging and travel expenses for teams of eight to twelve young people from the ages of 18-26 to travel around the country and participate in direct service in various communities. Richmond City’s Parks and Recreation Department was the beneficiary of the service of the Bayou 5 NCCC team during their final ten-week service quarter, and Richmond Grows Gardens hosted the Bayou 5 team for two out of the ten weeks.

*Team Picture at Uptown Community Garden*

First Week: Uptown Community Garden

March 15-19, 2022

The first week Richmond Grows Gardens spent working alongside the team we invested in Uptown Community Garden, a small community garden plot nestled on Parkview Avenue in the Fan. Uptown Community Garden is one of Richmond Grows Gardens’ oldest garden plots: in fact, it actually proceeds the existence of Richmond Grows Gardens. While this is in some ways advantageous to the garden, it also allowed for years of well-intentioned, someday-might-be-useful trash to compound and crowd the garden space. While we love the notoriously thrifty, ever imaginative gardeners that populate our community garden spaces, at some point of disuse, you just have to cull it. And that is exactly what we spent the first part of the week doing alongside the NCCC team. Together with their help, we removed several pounds of trash and invasive plants from the garden, hand weeding individual plots and trimming back the woodline along the compost bin in preparation for rebuilding the garden beds at the end of the week. In sum, three trailer loads of trash and invasives were removed.

Richmond Grows Gardens’ first week of hosting the NCCC team at Uptown also coincided with the AmeriCorps’ National Service Recognition Day on Friday, March 18th. That morning, we had the opportunity to host a handful of state officials from Virginia’s Volunteerism Office, alongside some local city officials. It was gratifying to host them in a green space that, otherwise, they usually only encounter through paperwork. Following the formalities, Kate Rivara, the Community Garden Coordinator for the city, led a raised garden bed building demonstration. Over the course of the remainder of that day and the following Saturday morning, 38 beds were built between the support of the NCCC team and local volunteers.

The visible difference made at Uptown from the beginning of the week to the end of the week was both astounding and rewarding.

*Uptown Community Garden after the week of work*

Second Week: Owl Orchard Community Garden

March 29-April 2, 2022

*Blooms at Owl Orchard Community Garden*

The second week Richmond Grows Gardens spent working alongside the team we invested in Owl Orchard Community Garden, a gem of a plot hidden at the end of a dead-end road in Southside along Reedy Creek. Being highly motivated to make the Bayou 5 NCCC team’s experience in Richmond as wide and varied as possible, intentionally showing them such a pronounced difference in what a community garden space could look like and consist of - even within the same city limits - was part of this immersive education.

While Uptown Community Garden and Owl Orchard Community Garden share the Richmond Grows Gardens’ vision of bringing together neighbors while increasing food access in the local area, in nearly every other way, they couldn’t be more different. Because Uptown Community Garden is set against a much more urbanized part of Richmond, it is significantly more exposed, and the din of the highway accompanies the gardeners in their tending. Meanwhile, as aforementioned, Owl Orchard Community Garden is found at the end of a quiet dead end street, shaded by trees that are fed by the creek. Birdsong rings out from the trees that surround the garden, met with the occasional harmony of an owl hooting.

Highlighting the differences between these two garden spaces is not to disparage either, but rather to point to a more valuable lesson altogether - it is the shape of the land that shapes the work.

Due to the lushness of the woods that surround Owl Orchard, the week was spent almost exclusively pruning and managing the woodline. In total, the woodline along the perimeter of the garden was pushed back by a minimum of 10 feet - oftentimes more. The team also helped us clear a 31 foot by 48 foot section in the front far left corner of the garden, where we subsequently placed and filled four additional beds. Towards the end of the week, they also helped establish a native pollinator garden in the flood plain of the garden that is currently in the process of being reforested.

While serving at Owl Orchard, the Bayou 5 team enjoyed working alongside the garden’s free-range chickens as they foraged, learning about bee-keeping from James, the garden steward, and having ongoing access to a fire pit during a week that was unseasonably - and often unreasonably - chilly.

Their time as a team and serving with us was simultaneously drawn to a close while sitting around that same fire pit, enjoying s’mores and each other’s company as we exchanged well wishes for whatever steps lie ahead for our program as well as each team member. While the team has since departed from Richmond and gone on to serve individually elsewhere, Richmond Grows Gardens remains both grateful for and indebted to their service - they left an imprint on the green spaces in our city that will outlast their service year.

The Dirt on Richmond Compost Initiative