Columbus Urban Farms Spark Community in Black Neighborhoods
Julialynne Walker and others are encouraging the Black community to reconnect with the soil.
By Donna Marbury
Columbus Monthly
Sept 7, 2021
Excerpt:
Julialynne Walker, a tireless advocate and activist for food access and community gardening in Columbus for decades, is reading these words from Frank X Walker’s poem “Homeopathic.” It’s June 17, and she’s speaking at the dedication ceremony of a new community garden bearing her name.
“The gardens that I work with and the people that I work with are like those little seeds that trail down our chin when you bite into a ripe tomato,” Walker says in her remarks. “What we are all doing is capturing the gardens that we knew as youths, and the gardens that our grandparents’ parents knew in their youth. Those gardens sustained us.”
The Julialynne Walker Gateway Learning Garden is a collection of boxed gardens and planters decorated by area artists and children, located at the steps of the King Arts Complex on the Near East Side of Columbus. The garden represents a moment and space where Walker receives her flowers—she’s traveled the world honing the art and science of fostering community through sowing and harvest.
“Over the last 10 years at PACT, I’ve had the great fortune of seeing Ms. Walker walking around the community, always with some vegetables in her bag and a smile on her face. This garden and all of the gardens in this community are watered by her service,” says Autumn Glover, president of Partners Achieving Community Transformation.
