Community Gardens

The Gawlicki Family Foundation’s support will directly provide healthy, affordable food to Hartford residents through the KNOX Community Garden Program. KNOX manages and maintains 20 community gardens that enable Hartford families to grow their own produce locally and expects to engage at least 325 families growing fresh food in 2021 – a 6% increase from 2020!

Support from the Gawlicki Family Foundation will help engage volunteers in growing produce in our community gardens to donate to families in need. They will work with Foodshare to coordinate delivery of this produce to local food banks. Through these efforts, they will directly provide healthy, affordable food to Hartford residents through the KNOX Community Garden Program. KNOX manages and maintains 20 community gardens that enable Hartford families to grow their own produce locally. This organization anticipates volunteers will grow at least one ton of fresh food that will be made available to1,000 residents at local food banks.

The high-quality foods from these gardens are a much-needed source of nutrition for the people of Hartford. With a staggering 28.1% of Hartford residents living in poverty, access to healthy food is vital (TownCharts, 2020).

All Knox community gardens are in Hartford and reflect the city’s cultural diversity – gardeners’ backgrounds include African American, Puerto Rican, Somali, Vietnamese, and West Indian. Many community gardeners are low-to-moderate income, as self-reported in their garden plot applications.