A collaborative nonprofit working to reduce barriers to gardening as a way to fight food insecurity, improve mental and physical health outcomes, and minimize the burden of increasing food prices.
Welcome to Chicago Grows Food! A collaborative project devoted to expanding and unifying the food growing community in Chicagoland. We are working towards food sovereignty by providing the materials, tools, education and resources anyone needs to garden!
We believe that communities in and around Chicago deserve equitable and holistic health outcomes and that empowering and creatively connecting advocates for safe and environmentally-conscious food production, land stewardship, food access, food security and nutrition will help bring this vision to life.
homes received a garden
0
partner organizations
0
communities engaged in programming
0
About Chicago Grows Food
Play Video
Feedback from Participants
"It really has helped me tremendously because I suffer from anxiety. And it's just really, has really made me feel so much better. I go out and I water my plants and my son sees I'm happy going outside. My grandbabies come to my house and they're so excited to tend to the garden. They want to water the garden. And honestly, and sometimes I'll just go out there in the garden and you know, I'll do yoga with the grandchildren. So and they love to, they want to garden themselves in their house too now. So we're just extended it to the family. My daughter's go, 'Oh, mom, they want to garden now.' Like, 'okay, I'll help you guys get started, you know?' So just teaching the grandkids"
"So before, I joined this program, like, 2 years back, I used to try to grow my own plants and the way I would do that, I would get those big buckets that you sell that they sell at Menards and just drill like a hole underneath. But I was not always very successful with that, so that's kind of discouraged me from continuing, until I started receiving these grow bags, and I felt like, you know, because the water seeps right through, it prevents you from overwatering the plants."
"I also think when it comes to growing your food, especially if it's something that you've never tried before, it's kind of exciting, or even something you try before, it's exciting to actually know that like it came through the toil of you, you know, taking care of that plant and seeing it grow and be edible."
"Many of our parents loved the grow bags and appreciated the bags being sent home. Thank you so much, it helped build a better bridge from families to school."