April 27, 2025
Community volunteers in the Newhallville neighborhood come out every Saturday morning from 10 am - 12 pm to steward the Shepard Street Vegetable Garden, a Gather New Haven registered vegetable garden and the location of Environmental Humanities grantee Paloma Lenz’s Geodesic Dome. On Saturday, April 19th, the Yale Student Environmental Coalition and Paloma brought a group of students to volunteer at the Community Garden as part of the Earth Week celebrations. It was a productive morning of raking leaves and preparing the garden for planting!
Shepard Street Garden was organized in collaboration with Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS). Stephen Cremin-Endes, NHS’s Director of Community Building & Organizing, explained that the garden is all about place-making and walked volunteers through the Hügelkulture mounds the community created to generate new soil. These mounds are important because the garden is on a lot where a home once stood, and that home was covered with lead paint. Lead contaminants are now in the soil, which pose a threat to community members, and edible foods cannot be grown in them then consumed due to the health risks. Generating new soil through compost is important for restoring the site, and the community has been able to produce vegetables by utilizing raised beds with new soil. Addie, the garden coordinator, explained to me that she planted two apple trees on the edge of the lot, and invited all of the volunteers to return to the garden for workdays. This signifies the commitment she and community members have to ensuring the space continues to feed the neighborhood and build community long-term.
Next in store for the dome is transitioning into becoming a greenhouse! Paloma explained that the next step will be covering it in a tarp so that it can be used to grow plants that require greenhouse conditions. Learn more about Paloma’s grant project here: https://environmentalhumanities.yale.edu/news/qa-environmental-humanitie…
Type:
Public Humanities Grant