We’re pleased to announce that our garden, the People’s Kitchen Detroit Healing Garden, is ready to begin hosting regular volunteer hours!  Starting next week, you’re welcome to come by every Tuesday from 5:00 – 7:00 PM and every Saturday from 2:00 – 4:00 PM (excepting Saturday 6/30 this month, due to the Allied Media Conference).  Volunteers are actually welcome to stop by any time they like, but we encourage attending guided volunteer hours first, to get acquainted with the space.  We’ll be using these times to work on general maintenance tasks like weeding, watering, and harvesting, and during these times you’ll always be able to find at least one garden organizer who can (hopefully!) answer your questions.

The People’s Kitchen Detroit Healing Garden is a community gardening space on W Warren Ave between Avery and Rosa Parks. We are focused on creating a beautiful, family-friendly space for all to enjoy, and on growing medicinal herbs and produce. The garden’s bounty will be available to volunteers, and will also be used in PKD events, helping to offset some of our costs in purchasing produce and therefore keep our offerings as affordable as possible.

Here’s what the lot that is now the garden looked like in late April, before we’d done much aside from remove a few bags of trash:

And here’s how [part of] the space was looking as of our most recent work day in May:

As you can see, we’ve installed several raised beds, as well as tilled up a significant portion of the back of the lot for in-ground production, and added a nice woodchipped pathway.  What you can’t see includes the bonfire pit, the kids’ play area (which is still in progress), the flower planters up near the sidewalk, and the additional in-ground beds in the backyard of the neighboring house.  We still have more beds to install and plenty more work to do, but we’re deeply grateful to have gotten this far!  We thank  the many volunteers who have come out to our work days, our hard-working and committed PKD staff, and the neighbors who have stopped by to offer their support.

We’re excited to see how this space continues to grow and evolve, and also to share it more widely and deeply.  We’ll be sharing more photos on this blog as the season progresses, but you know that’s no substitute for getting your hands into the soil, so please come out when you are available — and bring friends!  Hope to see you on a Tuesday or Saturday afternoon soon!