Community Gardens

Philadelphia is the poorest big city in the United States, and more than 16% of its residents are food insecure due to decades-longs discriminatory policies and practices. Philadelphia's urban farms and community gardens are critical to alleviating hunger and providing communities with greater access to fresh, healthy, and culturally appropriate foods. They are also essential green spaces in a densely populated city where neighbors can enjoy nature and come together to build social connections and community. 

Urban agriculture, which includes community gardens, school gardens, and production farms, increases access to fresh produce while strengthening social connections between neighbors. PHS offers resources for the urban agriculture community to serve neighborhoods with fresh, nutrient-dense produce grown with sustainable and organic practices. PHS provides organic growing supplies, access to tools, educational resources, and other support to help more than 170 community gardens, urban farms, and grow spaces to improve the quality of life in local neighborhoods. 

Explore how you can get involved in all our urban agriculture programs! See the latest activities in action in Norristown at the PHS Community Farm at Norristown Farm Park.

PHS supports established gardens and grow sites to expand their vegetable production capacity and share harvests with food pantries, mutual aid groups, and local community members through our City Harvest Program. Participating farms and gardens have access to seedlings and other inputs such as row cover, stakes for trellising and more in order to grow abundant harvests for donation. Once grown, these gardens share the crops with their community. Since its inception over 15 years ago, City Harvest participants have donated and shared thousands of pounds of locally grown organic produce to their communities.   

We offer gardening and organic growing workshops throughout the year taught by local leaders in the urban agriculture community. With our partners at  Neighborhood Gardens Trust, we work with community gardens to protect vital open spaces and ensure a healthy and just food system in Philadelphia.