4 minute read
The People’s Garden
A communal garden in North Minneapolis supports the community with more than just food.
STORY AND PHOTOS JENNIFER RENSENBRINK
On the corner of Plymouth and James Avenues in the Near North neighborhood of Minneapolis, a large garden took root on a formerly vacant lot. Karamu Communal Garden was the brainchild of Nothando Zulu and her husband Vusumusi, known as Elder Zulu. Although Nothando passed away in 2023, Elder Zulu and a small army of volunteers keep the garden alive and thriving, while supporting the neighborhood.
“Karamu is a Swahili word that means a place of joyous gathering,” says Elder Zulu. He says that Karamu just felt like the right name for this place. “We wanted to have food that was grown in the community available to anybody in the community, whether or not they worked in the garden.”
Feeding the community
Karamu was purposefully created as a communal garden in 2010. There is no fence and no private plots. The many tomatoes, peppers, collards, okra, watermelons and other vegetables are available for anyone in the community to harvest. Community members and master gardeners volunteer to educate anyone who wants to learn how to harvest the vegetables and maintain the garden.
In recent years, a grant from Urban Agriculture enabled the garden group to expand their mission and pay young people from the neighborhood for their time working in the garden, supporting the community with work opportunities that pay a living wage, in addition to the fresh produce.
“We really don’t have too much trouble with people taking more than their fair share,” said Katharine Sill, a Hennepin County Extension Master Gardener volunteer who is one of the lead volunteers at the garden. How have they achieved this? With constant community-building and ongoing education. Al Landers, one of the garden’s caretakers, lives across the street and chats with everyone he sees in and around the garden, making sure they know what the mission is and how to support it. This year, volunteers are creating signs with helpful advice about how to know when, for example, a watermelon is ready to pick.
Growing African vegetables
With the help of Hennepin County master gardener Chidi Chizodie, Karamu is one of several community and communal gardens that has featured African greens for the last two years. These are proving popular, particularly with newer immigrants in the neighborhood.
Back in 2010, when the Zulus first had the idea to create a communal garden, they reached out to local philanthropist Archie Givens for help securing the empty lot where the garden is located. “We told him our idea, and he liked it,” says Elder Zulu. The garden is also sponsored by the Black Storytellers Alliance, a group dedicated to keeping African oral traditions alive.
The garden started small and has grown over the years to include at least 16 raised beds and a field area for long rows of tomatoes, peppers and squash. Using lowimpact, no-dig, no-till methods, Karamu thrives each year on 10 cubic yards of compost delivered from the city of Minneapolis and the care it gets from many hands across generations—some classes are even taught by the Zulus’ grandchildren. Every week, whatever produce is left unpicked by the community is harvested by volunteers and given to Northpoint Food Shelf, so nothing goes to waste.
Surrounding the garden are shady places to sit, as well as raised beds with herbs and flowers, including a new perennial flower bed built this year to honor Nothando. Many plants are donated by community groups, and unused plants are distributed by garden volunteers to other gardeners in the neighborhood, making Karamu a hub not just for harvesting vegetables but for gardening education and resources.
Feature image: Master gardener volunteers Maureen Cassidy-Nyberg and Katherine Sill, plus Karamu volunteers Al Landers, Elder Vusumusi Zulu and Verlena Matey-Keke
