(bright music) >>It has the highest energy burden in the city.

And the other thing we know is that 10th and Page has some of the highest rate of heat-related diseases and also pollution related, such as asthma.

>>What I teach the youth is there can't be a challenge without a solution, right?

Duality exists.

We identified that we live in a food desert, but then we also identified the fact that a community garden or growing your own food is a way to provide a solution.

>>Production funding for "Virginia Home Grown" is made possible by the Mary Roper Davis and Robert Poore Roper Memorial Fund and by.

(birds chirping) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) Welcome to Virginia Home Grown!

Gardening not only gets us outdoors, it has many other benefits, too, like enhancing our physical and mental health, boosting the memory.

And it also brings people together.

Today we are visiting two groups working to improve their communities by growing plants.

First, we go to Petersburg with Randy Battle to meet Tyrone Cherry III, and talk about his work to create a community garden in the middle of a food desert.

Let's take a look.

>>I love being in nature.

So anything where it's like I get to like feel the dirt a little bit, it's always a great experience.

I think it is important that this area is here because especially since kids can come in and people like me can go learn about different types of food and see how, like though it takes a lot of effort to grow some of these things, but that it's actually like, it doesn't have to be too hard and just see that food is actually more plentiful than we believe it to be.

There's always another path to do things.

Nothing is what your first choice is.

>>He talks a lot about how like Petersburg is a food desert.

A lot of what I take away from this place and Cherry is less about like the actual act of growing things and more about what that does for the community and the earth around us.

>>So when I found out that we lived in a so-called food desert, like we lacked access to nutrient dense food, the solution that I found was to grow your own food.

So we started in our front yard with a community garden and over the last 10 years it's grown into this youth farm.

>>And for those who may not know what a food desert means, can you explain that a little bit?

>>Yeah, for sure.

Thanks for asking.

If you have to go more than 3.1 miles to get access to nutrient dense food, not just produce, not just food, but nutrient dense food, then the USDA designates you as a food desert.

Right?

>>Okay.

>>Another term for that is food insecurity, right?

So in the state of Virginia, Petersburg has the highest rate of food insecurity.

We have 30,000 people in the city of Petersburg.

We have one commercial grocery store.

>>Wow.

>>So this experience in urban agriculture, you know, the efforts that we're implementing and the ideas that we're implementing are super important.

It can show the community how to survive in the food desert.

>>Okay.

>>You know what I mean?

So the initial goal is how to survive in this food desert, growing our own food.

Then the next level is how do we thrive in this food desert?

>>Awesome.

Now, I've had the opportunity to walk around this amazing space.

I have seen onions.

I've seen greens.

I've seen cucumbers.

You have a lot going on.

>>Yeah.

I couldn't even tell you how many plants we have.

>>Okay.

>>And that's honestly the goal.

The goal is for the youth to come here and get inspired and encouraged to grow.

You know what I mean?

>>Right.

>>So we have the Medicine Maze.

It has herbs in it.

It's a conversation that we have about how food is medicine, but it's a way to get them into gardening, right?

They get to taste the rosemary, they get to taste the mint.

We get to talk about how that tastes like the gum that they eat.

Then we go over to try the kale or pick a sunflower.

We just want to show them how things grow and how easy it is to grow.

Like I was telling you earlier, you gotta sow to grow.

>>Okay.

>>So we try to teach them that.

>>Sow to grow.

>>You got it.

>>I like that.

I like that.

>>You gotta sow to grow.

>>I'm gonna take that and use it.

>>Okay.

>>And the mint tastes just like gum.

>>Oh, there we go.

>>It really does.

>>There we go.

That's how it should be.

Yeah.

My goal, so my favorite movie is "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

>>Okay.

So my goal with the Medicine Maze was to play Willy Wonka, right?

>>Okay.

>>Everything's edible.

Everything's eatable.

You can eat everything.

>>Okay!

>>I like to snack on the strawberries and the peas and the herbs.

My job is garden manager.

My sister, Ellie, she is livestock manager.

So she takes care of the animals.

My little brother, Justice, he trains our dog, Freedin, for the farm, and Jade is the manager for me, Justice, and Ellie.

>>When I grow up, I want to be a yoga teacher.

That's what I want to be, probably.

I think I would have a garden.

I should have some chickens, sheep, duck, rabbits.

I should have maybe all the animals.

My dad teaches us about our history and like our bodies and the farm.

It's fun.

You get a good workout on farms.

You get to eat good, like healthy snacks and you get to like connect with Mother Nature.

>>So I understand that you have four little children that help you out with the garden.

>>Yeah.

So we're homeschooling our four children and it's all about life skills, right?

We teach them that life is the lesson.

So home is school.

So they start their days off here at the farm.

They start off with mindfulness and breath work, and then each one of them have a job or responsibility here on the farm.

>>That is awesome.

Now, I understand that you have named different areas of this space.

Some of them mean a lot to you.

Tell us about that.

>>Yeah.

Yeah.

They all do.

They all do.

So they're all named after loved ones that helped me get to the space that I am now in urban agriculture.

>>Okay.

>>So we have the Mama Cherry Reading Garden.

We have the Khulu Kevin Medicine Maze.

>>Khulu Kevin.

>>We have the Papa Kelly Vegetable Garden.

>>Papa Kelly.

>>Yep.

We have the Classics Chicken Coop, which is-- >>Classic Chicken Coop.

>>Yeah, Classics.

>>Okay.

>>Yep.

Local business here in Petersburg.

You hear El Ray in the back.

We have the George Washington Carver Outdoor Classroom.

>>Okay.

>>Okay.

That's literally our outdoor classroom in honor of George Washington Carver in regenerative agriculture.

>>Okay.

>>We have the Happily Natural Outdoor Learning Lab.

That's like our science lab.

>>Okay.

>>As an educator, my first class was science, so that I know that lab part, that experience, being able to touch things makes a difference.

>>Right.

>>We have our Trash to Treasure compost station where we teach the youth about composting, vermicomposting, worm farming, JADAM liquid fertilizers, things like that.

We have the Papa Graves Community Kitchen where we go from soil to stomach or garden to gut, where we actually pick things out the vegetable garden and then prepare them and break bread together.

And then we also have the mobile farmstand, the Petersburg League of Urban Growers Mobile Farmstand.

>>That is absolutely wonderful.

Now, with so much going on in this space, how can I get involved?

How can the community get involved?

Where do we start?

>>So the most direct way to have impact on the space is to come to the space and exchange energy with it.

So every Monday, we host a volunteer day from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

>>Okay.

>>We call it Mondays for Many Hands.

That's a play on the Haitian proverb "Many hands make for light work."

And what we usually do is we send those volunteers home with fresh produce from the farm.

So in exchange for their energy, they get some energy from the farm.

>>That is absolutely amazing.

Now, tell us a little bit about your vision.

What do you see in the future for this space?

>>To be honest with you, I don't even want that to be on me or be on us as an organization.

I want that to be on the community.

Right?

>>Okay.

>>I want this space to be a reflection of the community, you know, what it is that they feel like they want, what it is that they feel like that they need.

The more events that we host here, the more youth that we have come through here, like I tell everybody that comes here, this is still a blank canvas and it's hard for them to understand that 'cause there's so much growing on.

But this is still a blank canvas.

There are still crevices that could have some things growing in it.

If you had an idea or a vision while you were here or after you leave here, please share it with us and then we'll apply that.

You know, I had a youth come here one day and say, "Cherry, I would love to be able to climb up in that tree and read a book."

So we got a Eagle Scout that's working on a project to build a little small tree house so that kids can go and read inside the tree.

So I just want it to be a reflection of the community.

I want you to say, "Hey, I came out there one day and I told Cherry that I wanted this and I came back the next day and it was there."

You know what I mean?

So-- >>Absolutely.

>>What it looks like in the future, I'm excited to see.

I just want to make sure that Petersburg is growing.

>>Petersburg is growing thanks to people like you and your community.

We appreciate you.

We appreciate everything that you're doing and I hope you keep it up.

>>Appreciate it.

>>Thank you so much for having us.

>>No, thank you.

>>I've seen kids come up here, like you would think would never step out foot here, and they've learned to love it.

>>Even people who were scared of bees a while ago, it took 'em a few minutes, a little bit longer than a few minutes, but eventually, as we were all just staring, learning a little bit about bees, we got 'em to walk closer and closer, be like, "Hey, these bees are actually kind of chill."

Now it's a whole nother world that you didn't know before.

It's great to be able to see that.

>>One thing I want people to know about this place is that it's not just this place.

Like this place is more about the idea than it is the physical ground underneath us.

You are bigger than the space you have provided.

You are bigger than just what you can do.

If you can get there and do stuff with other people, you'll be able to make something bigger than you could have ever dreamed of for yourself and for others.

The practice of small scale agriculture for the benefit of the local community, of individuals and families in need is no small undertaking.

But to do this while empowering youth is a feat I applaud Tyrone for achieving.

Next Jen Naylor has a tip to share for creating a beautiful, comfortable and functional garden space, she refers to as her living pantry.

(soft music) >>Today, I am in my garden.

I call this my living pantry.

When I need something to cook with, seasonings and whatever have you, I try to grow them myself.

And that way I can just come out here and pick it and go straight to the kitchen and start cooking.

Now, I have a couple of structures here that I built.

First, I have this structure that's built with this steel stake.

You can pretty much get it at any garden store or farm market.

Once you put that in, it's gonna be very sturdy.

And what you do is you just go out there and pick a limb from a tree, and then what you do, just tie that onto that stake, and then just create this natural-looking curves.

And that way the plant that you're gonna be planting, it's gonna follow that curve and create this beautiful, beautiful arch.

Now, the other structure is that I use cattle panel, which is very simple.

What I do is I stake one side in, and then just bend it over and stake the other side in.

Now, once this is fully grown and it covers the entire trellis, it creates a shade underneath.

It's almost like 10 degrees cooler.

It's just absolutely beautiful.

Now, I also have light strings, and these are solar-powered, so you don't have to plug it in.

And at nighttime, it just creates such a beautiful ambiance, and you can have your friends over and you go underneath and sit and enjoy and dine.

Now, I have my herb garden over here, which has all kinds of herbs growing.

I have oregano, purple and green basils and sweet basils.

I have lemon balm and Thai basils 'cause I love cooking Thai food.

Cilantro, parsley, rosemary, you name it.

I got herbs growing in here.

And that way if I need a certain kind of herb, all I have to do is come on out here and pick it and take it in and cook.

Growing over here in this structure is hyacinth vine.

These are very strong climbers, and they're just absolutely beautiful.

Once it's fully grown, it's going to have these beautiful purple clusters of flowers and also the pod filled with beans when they're young and they're edible and they're delicious.

They taste like edamame, which is soybeans, and I just absolutely love them.

Now, over here is nasturtium.

Now, these flowers are edible.

They're just absolutely gorgeous.

So what I do, I just pick these, and they're all different colors.

Look how beautiful these are!

I am going to use these for a salad that I'm gonna be making later.

And just the presentation, just put it over the salad.

People eat with their eyes.

When they look at the dish and it's beautiful, most likely they want to go ahead and try that dish.

Why not create something like that so that it makes people happy?

Life is just absolutely wonderful.

Enjoy it.

Jen's creativity knows no bounds.

Who would think of using vining vegetables to define seasonal outdoor living areas?

Consider using vining beans, sweet potatoes, loofah, gourd, squash, or even cucumbers to create such a space.

I can almost hear those leaves rustling in the breeze as I sit underneath their canopy.

And now I visited Charlottesville and talked with Peggy VanYahres to learn how ReLeaf Cville works to plant trees and bring shade to an underserved community.

>>This is the 10th and Page neighborhood.

I've lived in this neighborhood for 64 years.

I remember more fruit trees, particularly pear trees and apple trees, which there aren't any now.

I think of the coolness of a shade tree.

I think of the health benefits of having more trees, in general, in this area.

Also, the mental and the emotional health benefits, the therapy that comes with the birds, singing in the mornings, and the squirrels playing in the trees.

So all of that is beneficial because we are living in a world where our planet is getting much more heat.

>>It started in 2021.

I was on the tree commission, which is a city body, and we'd been doing tree canopy studies since 2004 to look at the canopy all over the Charlottesville.

And then what we realized about then, in 2020, was the canopy was decreasing terribly.

It had gone from 50%, in 2004, to 38%.

We also looked at each neighborhood, and 10th and Page has one of the lowest tree covers in the city, it's only 18%.

>>Oh my, yes.

>>So the city plants trees, but only on public property.

So some of us on the Tree Commission decided, well, we needed to step in and plant trees on private property because that same study that did the tree canopy said that 75% of the land available in Charlottesville for new trees was on private property.

We looked around at other organizations in Virginia, what they were doing.

We looked at Southside ReLeaf in your city- >>[Peggy Singlemann] My dear Richmond.

>>And then we decided, okay, this is our mission.

We believe that trees save lives, and our mission was to improve the health in neighborhoods, such as 10th and Page, that don't have many trees.

>>Excellent mission.

>>From the rising heat.

>>Yes.

>>And how do we do that?

We have three things.

We plant trees, we preserve existing big trees, and we do a lot of education, particularly of teenagers and youth.

So the Green Team is a summer program for two weeks.

We teach them about trees and nature in the city.

We teach them how to canvas neighborhoods, knock on doors.

We had 70 homes.

We got 40 trees.

>>[Peggy Singlemann] You just answered my question.

How many said yes?

>>40 trees.

>>That changes things.

>>That changes things.

And then they help us plant the trees, in November.

>>[Peggy Singlemann] So you get permission to come to private property to plant the tree on their property?

>>Yeah.

>>[Peggy Singlemann] And the students, the youth are helping to plant the trees.

>>Right, right.

>>That's wonderful.

>>Yeah, so they knock on doors, they leave flyers, door hangers, if the people aren't home, so they can contact us.

We put up posters in the neighborhood, telling everyone to contact us for a free tree.

So it's been very successful.

>>I heard about ReLeaf Cville when I read a flyer that was left on my door.

I called and found out that they were in this neighborhood, particularly because it had been identified as a hotspot, which I wasn't really aware of.

And I'd looked at the data and I really could believe in the data that it was proving, 'cause I'm living here.

I could feel the heat.

They set up an opportunity for me to get a tree, gave me a selection to choose from, and they came with a crew of young people, which that was very good to see the young people out here planting the trees, and they were supervised by the ReLeaf staff, but they did all the work.

This tree is a London Planetree and this area is a very damp area, and I intentionally wanted this tree planted here, selected it out of numbers of other trees that they have because of the dampness in this area.

>>[Peggy Singlemann] When you approach a homeowner, asking them, we'd like to plant a tree, what do you offer them?

>>We offer about 10 different kinds of trees.

We try to do big trees, shade trees, because they're gonna be the most important.

So we have white oaks, willow oaks, London planes, American basswood, tulip poplar, those are just a few, because we want long-lived trees that don't require a lot of maintenance, and they're native to the area.

>>And grow a little quick.

>>And grow a little quick, yes.

>>Yes, yes.

Peggy, once ReLeaf plants a tree and they've explained to the homeowner the care of it, but do you really leave them hanging?

Do you just walk away?

>>No, no, no because we know that if you don't follow the trees, they may not live.

So we follow them very closely.

Like on Arbor Day, we get my own family's tree company, they come and they check on all the trees.

They put more mulch down if they have to, they do a little pruning, structural pruning.

And we also get the kids to come too and knock on doors, and say, "Have you watered your tree?"

(laughs) You know?

>>Yes.

>>So we do that for a couple years until the tree gets a really good start.

>>[Peggy Singlemann] Great.

ReLeaf is really making a difference in this community.

Are the neighbors involved?

>>Yes.

We do a lot of that.

For instance, when we first came to 10th and Page, we met with the Homeowners Association.

We got some leaders in the neighborhood, like Michelle and James Bryant, who's on our board, who have lived in this neighborhood forever to talk it up.

Because you know, if your neighbor's doing it, you might wanna do it too.

(laughs) >>[Peggy Singlemann] Exactly, exactly, and if your neighbor's involved, you might wanna get involved too.

It's a good thing.

>>Yeah.

We're really proud because just in two years, we planted 168 trees, both in this neighborhood and a neighborhood called Rose Hill, which borders this neighborhood.

This fall we're starting a really innovative program.

It's called a Tree Preservation Program.

We've modeled that over Arlington County and we're going to offer free tree care to selected homeowners.

>>That's excellent.

So many people are afraid of their tree, and they shouldn't be.

>>[Peggy Van Yahres] And we know that preserving big trees, mature trees is even more important than planting small trees 'cause they take 15 to 20 years to give you the same benefits.

>>Yes.

>>We did an experiment at a local school.

They have two playgrounds.

One is completely in the sun.

That's for little kids.

The other one is in the shade.

So we took a thermometer out on one hot day in September.

In the shade, it was 80 degrees.

In the hot sun, it was 102 degrees.

That's 22 degrees difference.

That's what trees can do.

>>[Peggy Singlemann] I do have to ask you, looking forward, what do you see in the future here with ReLeaf Cville?

>>Okay, well some of us are a little old, (chuckles) and we laugh, we say have four more years.

(laughs) So we are in the process right now, doing a strategic plan about how we can grow.

We're becoming our own 501-C3.

So we hope to be able to, right now we're all volunteer, but for it to continue and to expand, we know we've gotta have some paid staff.

So are you looking for a job, Peggy?

>>(laughs) No, I've got one, thank you.

I just applaud you.

I applaud everybody involved and I'm just so grateful that the people in these neighborhoods, who deserve to live just like any other neighborhood in the same community.

So I say thank you.

>>Well thank you.

And thank you for highlighting ReLeaf Cville.

>>[Peggy Singlemann] Oh, anytime.

Planting trees are so important, and they save lives.

>>[Peggy Van Yahres] Yes, they do.

The cool shade of a tree on a hot day is often taken for granted.

That is, until it is not there.

With neighbors helping neighbors, newly planted trees can create these cooler spaces for all to enjoy.

And now Serome Hamlin has tips to share for keeping aggressively growing plants in check in your garden.

(upbeat percussive music) >>Everybody has those plants in their gardens that can be, let's say, a little thuggish.

An easy way to take care of that is throughout the season, check your plants, and when it's started going into more seed production than flower, then you know it's time to cut it back.

This is a campanula here, and it can be very aggressive in the garden.

So I tend to wait until mid-season, just when you could see it's only a couple blooms on the stalk and start cutting it back.

So that's what I'm going to do today, is just go through and just start cutting things back close to the base of the plant and get rid of some of these stalks that have blooms.

Yes, you will lose some of the blooms, but you get rid of a ton of seeds that you're not gonna want coming up in your garden later.

Now, this will work with plants like this.

I also have things like Tradescantia that can be very aggressive, and it's that time to start cutting those things back too.

And now that you have this cut, you can see that it's more seed than flower.

So you can just get rid of this, put it in your compost bin, or if you're worried that it's not going to be hot enough to burn off the seeds, then just go ahead and dispose of it in the trash.

But then the next thing I need to do is you can see here I have lots of babies, so I don't want these growing around some of the plants that's in the garden.

So what I'm going to do is actually get rid of some of these.

You just take your hori hori knife or your trowel and get in there, dig up the plants, and you want to be very strategic about getting up all of the roots.

This really works too with plants that spread by rhizomes.

Go through and just dig up pieces and will really shrink the clump down.

So go out, check things like your turtleheads, your salvias, echinacea, even your daisies.

If they get too big of a clump to take up too much space, just go through and just start digging things up.

Really, don't be afraid to do some editing to your garden.

Even in the fall, you can do Coreopsis that would bloom throughout the summer, but by fall you would start having more than what you need.

And this will really help with your maintenance in your garden.

Go out, get your hands dirty, and start editing and cleaning up your garden.

Whether your garden feeds a community or is on a small plot of land preventing overcrowding is the easiest method to increase air flow.

This benefits the plants by reducing disease.

So please don't hesitate to remove seed heads and thin young plants.

Steps taken to benefit our communities are even more important.

I encourage you to look around for opportunities to share what you have learned in your garden through volunteering with a community garden.

Consider filling a need that will not only benefit the locality, but you and the others who become involved as well.

See you soon.

And until then, remember gardening is for everyone and we are all growing and learning together.

>>Production funding for Virginia Home Grown is made possible by the Mary Roper Davis and Robert Poore Roper Memorial Fund.

And by.

(birds chirping) (gentle folk music) (gentle folk music continues) (gentle folk music continues) (gentle folk music continues) (light music)