ABOUT THE PETERSON GARDEN PROJECT

The Peterson Garden Project mission is to recruit, educate and inspire a new generation of gardeners who want to gain control of their food supply, grow their own produce organically, and make urban gardening the norm—not the exception.

In just one short year, the Peterson Garden Project has become a leader in Chicago’s local food movement, and has won awards and recognition from the Mayors’ Landscape Awards (1st place), Cook County Development Association, Field Museum, and Woodbridge Giving Through Growing Garden Heroes. Plus, our volunteers and gardeners have donated nearly 500 pounds of food to local nutrition programs.

The Peterson Garden Project takes seriously its mandate to get everyone to grow their own food by addressing the needs and difficulties of urban gardeners:

Knowledge & training.
Today, people in urban areas don’t know how to grow food, but during WW2 Chicagoans started 1,500 community gardens in two years and more than a quarter MILLION home gardens. 90% had never gardened before.

We’ll help Chicagoans learn to grow and prepare their own fresh, organic food again, right outside of their own back doors.

Personal & community health
Community gardeners eat more vegetables, exercise more, weigh less and feel healthier than non-gardeners.

We’re committed to getting fresh organic food on the tables that need it the most—kids in stressed households where resources are slim.

Food safety & security
In the richest nation in the world we have families facing food shortages as well as high cost, low access, lost nutritional value due to industrialized production, poor farming practices exposing us to chemicals and pathogens, and an unhealthy eating culture leading to bad nutritional choices.

We’ll give people the resources they need to produce their own fresh, safe food.

THE YARDEN
ALDERMAN PAT O'CONNOR
ASIAN HUMAN SERVICES
RED, WHITE & GREW

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