Peace Gardens & Market …growing gardens, cultivating community, transforming trauma

The Gardens

The gardens are open to the public year-round from dawn ‘til dusk each day.  We welcome visitors, but ask that you stick to the Garden Guidelines (see below).

We host Garden Volunteer Days every 1st and 3rd Saturday from 10AM – 2PM where any and all are welcome to join us in pulling weeds, staking tomatoes, turning compost, harvesting veggies, mulching paths, and any number of other garden tasks.

Each week, during harvest season, we gather and weigh all of the produce coming out of the gardens.  We then distribute garden care packages to neighborhood elders and use the rest to share with volunteers and in the making of value-added products like jams, jellies, pickles, salsas, relishes, and sauces.  The harvested vegetables are also available on a sliding scale, pay-what-you-can price on our Friday Farmstand, open from 3PM – 7PM.

As part of our ongoing work, we pay neighborhood youth a stipend to work in the gardens and assist with community beautification.

Throughout the warmer months, weather permitting, we host live events in the garden ranging from live music, outdoor movie nights, plays, neighborhood gatherings, birthday parties, and build-your-own pizzas (in the wood-fired oven!). 

It was 2003 and we were facing significant issues in our local neighborhood and on the global landscape.  Locally, we were continuing to deal with the lasting impacts of the war on drugs and globally we were racing headlong into the second war in Iraq.  At the heart of any war is violence and the loss of the sense of safety that most of us enjoy in our everyday lives.  Our answer, to re-seed that sense of safety in our neighborhood and increase the peace in the larger world, was to start a community garden.

Initially the garden was started on borrowed land (actually a vacant lot) that belonged to our uncle, but it wasn’t long before we were fortunate enough to purchase and become the fulltime stewards of the land ourselves.  We made a commitment early on to construct the gardens from repurposed materials – to be an example of re-use and environmental stewardship every step of the way.  The process of creating a community garden – particularly one built with discards from our neighbor’s trash and area dumpsters – is not without its challenges and detractors.  Eventually, however, our whole community got on board!

The space has grown from its humble beginnings (a few raised beds) to an elaborate and whimsical, art-packed woodland playground tucked into the side of a hill in our sweet little West Asheville neighborhood.  A lot has changed since 2003…in the gardens, in our neighborhood, and around the globe.  As Asheville has grown in popularity, our neighborhood has been on the front lines of gentrification.  We anticipate this wave of gentrification and rising property values to continue as folks migrate away from the coasts due to climate change and away from larger cities due to the impacts of COVID 19 and other future pandemics.  As we have welcomed our new neighbors, we have become more acutely focused on centering equity & justice in the gardens and our work.

And, since those early days with those raised beds, our community has helped us build out an amazing infrastructure that includes the following:

  • Firepit
  • Wood-fired outdoor oven
  • Performance Stage
  • Tool shed
  • Greenhouse
  • Combined classroom & library
  • Hands-on learning lab/shop
  • ART! – portraits, metal sculptures, found object installations, & more…
  • Photovoltaic Solar Power System
  • and our most recent addition – Peace Garden Retreat & Art Residency

The space has nurtured and helped launch several local initiatives and small businesses, including Green Opportunities, M S Lean Landscaping, and Hood Huggers International/Hood Tours.  And we look forward to nurturing and supporting many more entrepreneurs as we grow!

For gardens to grow, thrive, and expand…they need champions.  People who see the value of the work being done and give of their time, talent, and treasure to inject the gardens with life, love, & resources.  One of our earliest champions was Martha Jane Ligon.  Martha Jane or “Mot” as her friends affectionately called her, was a small woman with a huge heart and a giant sense of humor.  Her home and property were just down the street from the Peace Gardens – the back side of which was a sizable, but overgrown lot which she generously offered to us if we’d like to expand the gardens.

Of course, we said yes!  Safi’s Dad loaded up one of his smaller tractors and brought it to Asheville for a weekend.  He quickly cleared the lot and we got busy planting in the hard clay soil.  We started small, planting a few rows in the most fertile corner of the lot.  Each year, with the support of area college students and volunteers, we slowly reclaimed more and more of the vacant lot – building the soil and adding essential infrastructure to make the garden more sustainable.

Since those early days, we’ve added a full community composting system, a gravity-fed watering system using water collected from a neighbor’s roof, a small fruit orchard including fig bushes, apple trees, grape arbor and blueberry bushes, a community wood-chip/mulch pile, and small shelter.  In fact, Martha Jane’s is now the most productive garden in our network.

Martha Jane left this earthly world in 2019 and we sure do miss her sweet laugh, but the gardens live on as a living memorial to a beautiful and generous spirit.  Her daughter, Alice, now resides in the bungalow overlooking the gardens and enjoys the weekly produce deliveries her mother’s garden produces…

The Vine is our most recent garden partner.  Thanks to the generosity of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, who is providing the land for the garden, we are cultivating an additional site for community food production.  With the help of community volunteers, we’ll be working on some key projects in the coming months/years:

  • Moving and re-covering the small greenhouse
  • Equipping the garden toolshed with a full range of garden tools & gloves
  • Installing retaining walls for erosion control and additional garden beds
  • Designing and installing a community composting system
  • Designing and installing a gravity-fed watering system

GARDEN GUIDELINES:

  • Don’t step on plants or beds
  • Stay on the paths
  • Keep dogs on a leash (and pick up after them)

TAKE ~

  • deep breaths…
  • only what you need…
  • time to relax & enjoy…

LEAVE ~

  • toys here for others…
  • art the way you found it…
  • donations of time, talent, and treasure…
  • a piece of your spirit…

Join us on a journey through the gardens…

Map of the Main Garden…