Rosedale is fertile for urban gardening
By MARY SANCHEZThe Kansas City Star
Kansas City’s council members might want to peer westward as they hash out ordinance changes making it easier for urban gardeners to share their bounty.
Look across the state line, over Rosedale way, for a sprouting (pun intended) example of what’s possible.
The one consistent pitch in the discussion is that changing the city’s ordinance would promote healthier eating in the lower-income neighborhoods saddled with higher rates of obesity and all the health complications, too.
Advocates envision taking what the urban core has in abundance — vacant lots — and partnering the space with gardeners eager to till, plant and harvest the new “back 40.”
As one speaker before a city panel yesterday noted: It is not so much that urban areas are “food deserts,” but rather are “food swamps” sinking with poor health choices.
Try finding a Whole Foods quality grocery on the East Side and people will rightly look at you as if you have a hole in the head. But fast food is sure plentiful, along with corner markets offering sugar- and sodium-laden products.
Enter Rosedale, a community with few sidewalks and no major grocery, but 25 churches within four square miles. There, a healthy movement has been pieced together through church involvement, grants, volunteers and ingenuity. Nine community gardens will grow this summer.
A Sunday farmers market will open May 16 and veggie vendors will include locals, a Johnson County synagogue and a Liberty church.
A grant by the Menorah Legacy Foundation will allow people with Vision Cards, the state food assistance program, to double their funds by shopping at the farmers market. Fruit trees are being planted in Rosedale, and one church has a weekly meeting for kids to pick, cook and learn about fresh food.
Meanwhile, Kansas City is essentially deciding how to regulate people selling what they grow. One person’s residential tranquility could be threatened by cucumber-seeking crowds. Some urban gardening enthusiasts, however, find that tranquility boring and want to share their crops. The council’s more hesitant members are right to insist on restraints on signage advertising produce for sale, hours of operation, etc.
The Unified Government still has some tweaking to do on its gardening laws, and gardeners are watching Kansas City. As the area’s overarching governmental entity, the tone Kansas City sets can matter to surrounding towns.
Right now, urban agriculture is a blooming health fad. But it could wither if not engrained into social norms by ordinance, examples and nonstop promotion.
What’s needed is a little socially engineered cultivating, if you will.
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