Growing Spaces

🌱 What Is a Growing Space?

Growing food comes in an array of forms, each offering a unique contribution to the tapestry of its environment. Container gardens, thriving in compact urban spaces, demonstrate how an urban balcony can burst with verdant life. Community farms reflect collective efforts towards food security and environmental stewardship, where neighbors unite to cultivate not just crops, but also camaraderie and resilience. Food forests utilizing permaculture principles guide the creation of self-sustaining ecosystems that meld into the natural landscape, providing a bounty of food, habitat for wildlife, and a living classroom for sustainable practices. These are just a few of the many types of growing spaces established, emerging, or possible in our communities.

Growing Spaces Working Group Activities

With the objective to "examine current urban agriculture and local food production" and identify future opportunities for growing, we were inspired by Philadelphia’s Urban Agriculture Plan, which categories the variety of growing spaces by type or institutional affiliation (jump to definitions and examples below).
We developed an inventory of existing growing spaces within the five planning project communities (Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Peabody, Salem), and collected high-level data around each space (proximity to environmental justice populations, legal/conservation protections for land, ownership type, etc.).
- [Note that some growing space types—such as individual gardens on private property—were out of scope for this inventory. However, through conversations with residents, we were able to gather insight into some interesting local growing stories worth sharing.]
From the broader inventory we selected a representative list of growing spaces grouped by type and town and conducted interviews to better understand funding approaches, revenue, community participation, and other operational insights for the various models. Case studies will be linked below based on the type of growing space once finalized.
We conducted GIS analysis to identify potentially viable new growing spaces. This includes creating a map of vacant parcels using assessor’s data, and identifying beneficial characteristics for growing (sunny, well-drained, flat, etc.).

Moving Forward

Some activities we're planning:

Continue learning from, supporting, and celebrating existing growing spaces and those who help manage them.
Review which parcels should be assessed and prioritized for new growing spaces, through careful coordination and alignment with municipalities and community engagement.
Collaborate with Salem State University GIS course for ongoing maintenance and additions to the data viewer.
Identify opportunities for alignment with broader strategic initiatives, such as the Massachusetts Farmland Action Plan.

Types of Growing Spaces

Individual Garden

Individual Gardens are run by one person, family, or business. They are typically private and production is generally for personal use. Individual gardens are often located on an individual’s home property.

Community Garden

Community Gardens contain individual plots for use by community members. They are generally publicly accessible or open to the community members who maintain plots.

Local examples include: Salem Community Gardens, Endicott Community Gardens (Danvers), Moraine Farm Community Garden (Beverly), Lynn Community Gardens

Community Farm

Community Farms take a unified approach to the management of planting raised rows, instead of individual plots. They are often run by community organizations, groups, or nonprofits, and crops are often shared or sold locally.

Local examples include: Mack Park Farm & Food Forest (Salem), Newhall Fields (Peabody)

Commercial Farm

Commercial Farms are business enterprises that produce crops, seeds, or flowers for sale. They can be run by an individual (with workers) or by a cooperative of farmers.

Local examples include: New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at Moraine Farm (Beverly), Connors Farm (Danvers), Tillie's Farm (Peabody), Maitland Mountain Farm (Salem)

Social/Pollinator Garden

Social Gardens are green or open spaces that function primarily as a social space for community use. They are not necessarily food-producing. However, some may focus on pollinator-friendly plantings and habitats which can contribute to the broader food system.

Local examples include: Dane Street Beach Pollinator Garden (Beverly)

Institutional Garden

Institutional Gardens are run by places of worship, hospitals, libraries, prisons, universities, or other institutions (excluding K-12 schools).

Local examples include: Lynn Medical Village Community Farm

School Garden

School Gardens are run by a K–12 school, generally on school property. They are generally used by students and teachers, with some access for parents, other known and trusted individuals, or community members who help maintain the garden.

Local examples include: Lynn Public Schools' "Salad Days" Gardens, Salem Public School Gardens

Food Forest/Orchard

Food Forests/Orchards are cultivated edible landscapes producing fruits, nuts, and other perennial crops. Other city spaces like public right-of-way, parks, and other natural areas may also include edible and medicinal plants sought by people knowledgeable about foraging.

Local examples include: Mack Park Farm & Food Forest (Salem)

Indoor Agriculture and/or Rooftop Garden

Indoor Agriculture and Rooftop Gardens may employ vertical growing techniques, hydroponics, aquaponics, and other methods within or on top of buildings. They may be run by individuals, institutions, nonprofits, business enterprises, or other entities.

Other Agricultural Use

This includes use of the space primarily for other farming activities such as greenhouses, nursery crop cultivation, raising animals (e.g., bees, goats, hogs, hens, and cows), large animal veterinary facilities, and agricultural support services (e.g., farm machinery equipment, organic materials or compost facilities).

Is the Growing space you care about protected?

Each blue pin is an existing growing space. This data was created by Essex County Greenbelt Association (Greenbelt) in partnership with Tufts’ Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning Department (See a PDF version of this resource).

Greenbelt conserves farmland to support the local food economy, to ensure farming remains an integral part of our communities and to preserve our agricultural heritage. Greenbelt has protected over 1500 acres of working farmland including:

Moraine Farm, Beverly
Tillie's Farm, Peabody
Dodge Farm, Wenham
Iron Ox Farm, Hamilton

Greenbelt has also helped identify other public parcels that may have potential to become a growing space. See more about that work here.

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