ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Eat your veggies. Soon, people in one St. Petersburg community won’t have a reason not to, thanks to a new garden project.
Developers of a newly built 330-unit apartment complex in South St. Pete are offering a green space that includes a garden for its residents. But they aren’t stopping there. They are also including the surrounding community, and it is all thanks to an idea from a local gardening expert.
How do you grow a community? How about starting from the soil? That’s what Desiree’ Sims said came to mind when she saw the brand new Lake Maggiore apartment complex being built in her neighborhood.
“I reached out to the developer and just asked if they would be interested in putting in some edible landscape,” she said.
Sims has her own gardening business called Peas & Love Edible Gardening. So, when she planted that seed with the developers, she already had a plan.
“So, instead of chemicals being sprayed and lawn mowers and sod being put down, we can come in and we can actually plant fruit trees, right? We can grow vegetables. We can grow herbs, and they were open to the idea and wanted to do it,” she said.
It’s something she said is vital for communities as areas like this continue to grow — with one of the main benefits being health related.
“Having grown up sometimes food insecure in my own childhood, I also realized, I knew other people in the community, not everyone had access to this nutritious food you need in order to combat these diseases,” she said.
Sims calls herself a personal trainer for gardens, so part of this project will not only feed the residents when she harvests the vegetables there, but it will also serve as a connecter to the broader community.
“The programming will hit on various topics to do with both sustainability and with urban agriculture. So it might be a healthy cooking class. It might be an herbal class of how to use herbs from the garden in order to make your own medicines. It might be a composting class hosting elementary school kids out here in the children’s garden area,” said Sims.
It’s a concept Thomas Stanchak from the developer of Lake Maggiore said is by design.
“I think that being able to establish a place that people can put their hands in the soil. That people can in different ways experience nature and it’s part of the community where they live, part of the location where they live. I think what we’re trying to do is make people’s lives better,” Stanchak said.
Living well and eating better — that’s Sims’ hope that stems from gardens like this one.
