Community Gardens in Longfellow

If you're considering relocating to Minneapolis, you'll likely start your home search on the internet. You'll get a feel for the types of housing available, and how much home you can get for your money. The internet is a great way to start searching for a home. In fact, over 80% of us start our home search on the net.

Then, when it's time to get into your REALTOR'S car and start looking for homes in-person, I hope you'll choose a REALTOR who knows Minneapolis. Choose a REALTOR from the suburbs, and they likely won't know as much about the area or about the little treasure around the corner from the house you're looking at. 

For example, drive through the Longfellow neighborhood on Dowling Street and you'll drive by a few blocks of fenced-in garden plots. These plots are right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. You'd expect to see houses here!

 

Here's the story:

Located in the Howe neighborhood of the Longfellow Community in Minneapolis there's a peaceful stretch of land that has made history. The Dowling Victory Gardens broke ground in 1943 when our nation was at war. Canned foods were rationed regularly, and people were encouraged to grow their own produce. If demand on the food supply was lightened, the War Department would save money on purshasing food supplies such as potatoes and carrots to send overseas to feed the troops.

Back then, canning and preserving harvests were an everyday skill so there were very few people needed to tend the gardens along 46th Ave and Dowling Street. Let's face it with a grocery store or convenience store on every block, very few of us still can or preserve our vegetables. So naturally, the garden plots of gotten much smaller over time.

Today, there are over 175 garden plots and over 200 gardeners that tend to the Dowling Community Gardens. There are volunteers that offer some organization to the gardeners, a shared tool shed and water supply, and lots of community involvement. The gardeners are as diverse as the Minneapolis neighborhoods they serve.   The gardeners are seniors (a topic near and dear to my heart), from different countries, and with different abilities (there are raised beds for gardeners in wheelchairs). Extra produce is donated to area organizations, and above all, these gardens bring people together.

If you're relocating to Minneapolis and you're wondering how you can get a little plot and a little piece of history of your own, visit the Dowling Community Gardens Website.

Submitted by Lisa Dunn
lisadunn@edinarealty.com