Seeds to Soil is a 501(c)3 urban ecology initiative and 2019 Citizen’s Committee for NYC Neighborhood Grant Winner. It’s a collective of people who, through their respective practices, support and care for our urban ecologies, growing together in common spaces. Founded by PPAC alum Michelle (a Parks Super Steward, Citizen Pruner, and Master Composter) and involving several current guildmates, this team designs environmental experiences and creates citizen science projects for organizations and individuals. They care for the health and well-being of people and the planet using an equity lens and a promise of quality, dedication, and creativity.
One such initiative is the Tiny Plots project, which currently lives on the Prime Produce Guildhall rooftop. Tiny Plots is a distributed community garden that facilitates remote connection with other gardeners, nourishing both people and plants in the process.
The Tiny Plots Garden Kit is one square foot, so gardens can be grown individually one foot at a time or collaboratively as gardens. It’s modular design consists of a milkcrate, milkcrate lining, soil and/or seeds.
Tiny Plots is designed with urban grassroots community gardening in mind as a way to bring a diverse group of people together by providing them with access to growing space. In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down NYC and restricted New Yorkers movement in the city, it became clear to the Seeds to Soil/Tiny Plots team, that it would be hard to care for their rooftop garden, so the team leaned into a long standing idea around a distributed community garden. Food insecurity and isolation were on the rise in NYC, negatively impacting people’s health and well-being, so in support of community and plants, Tiny Plots was launched.
For more information, visit SeedstoSoil.org and/or TinyPlots.org
