Garden Projects

Urban Agriculture at Roger Williams Park

Jump to: Community Garden | Edible Forest Garden

Community Garden

In response to a demonstrated community need for access to healthy food and gardening education, the URI Outreach Center established the Roger Williams Park Community Garden (RWP CG) in partnership with the Providence Parks + Recreation Department in 2011. According to the US Department of Agriculture Food Desert Locator, the Washington Park neighborhood in Providence is a food desert, with 83.2% of residents having low access to a supermarket or large grocery store. The RWP CG, located within a mile of this USDA 'food desert', directly serves residents of this neighborhood, providing 45 community plots for a total of 2,350 square feet of growing space for produce, recreation and wildlife gardening.

Flyer for 2012 Gardenbreaking Day and Plots Available

The RWP CG is a hub for on-site training on sustainable practices and gardening education. It features 12 teaching plots where URI Master Gardeners (MGs) demonstrate a number of sustainable and organic gardening methods, including succession planting and a Three Sister's, square foot and vertical gardening for small spaces. The garden also features a pollinator garden composed of native plants propagated through the Rhody Native Initiative, and 4 Children's Garden plots tended by URI Master Gardeners and utilized in youth programming.

Garden Plots

Garden plots at the Roger Williams Park Community Garden are 10' long x 5' wide (50 ft²), and are offered to Providence and Edgewood residents for $30/year, plus $10 clean-up deposit each (you may request more than 1 plot).

If you are interested in obtaining a plot at the Roger Williams Park Community Garden for the 2012 season, please click here.

Community gardeners of all ages from three Providence neighborhoods garden alongside URI Master Gardeners and attend MG- and URI staff-led workshops twice per month from May through October. Gardeners are also afforded the opportunity to schedule troubleshooting sessions with MGs. This one-on-one attention has proven to be very successful to engage gardeners of all experience levels.

The RWP CG is a member of the Providence Community Growers Network (CGN), and is represented by URI staff and community gardeners who sit on the CGN Council.

Edible Forest Garden

The Edible Forest Garden (EFG) at Roger Williams Park, scheduled for phased installation in the spring of 2012, will be a diverse, highly productive addition to the forested urban landscape in Roger Williams Park. The garden will be a model for ecological urban landscape management that produces market-viable fruits, nuts, vegetables, fodder, fuel and fiber. It will be a system that meets human and wildlife needs, and will supplement ongoing work by the Roger Williams Park Pond Restoration Project by restoring vegetation along the shoreline of Edgewood Pond.

The EFG will supplement produce grown in the adjacent Roger Williams Park Community Garden, and will increase the volume of fresh, locally produced food available to city-dwellers living in food insecure areas. Through a partnership with URI Master Gardeners and community gardeners, residents will have the opportunity to actively participate in harvest and garden maintenance through a mentor program.

The URI OC will form an EFG Installation & Maintenance Team beginning in spring of 2012 to help gather materials, coordinate workdays and help with installation and the development of a maintenance plan. A small series of maintenance workshops will be held prior to installation, focused on the principles of sheet mulching, transplanting and general maintenance. If you are interested in joining the Edible Forest Garden Installation and Maintenance Team, click here!

The URI OC is always looking for support with sign-making and project publicity and outreach. To help out, click here.

The Design

Plant List

2017...Predominantly native understory thrives while canopy layer grows up!