Fenced in backyard of a red house

Jenga Mwendo Strengthens Community Through Gardening in New Orleans

To boost healthy food access in the Lower Ninth Ward, the Backyard Gardeners Network runs community gardens and offers education and involvement opportunities.

February 20, 2017 | Source: Civil Eats | by Andrea King Collier

To boost healthy food access in the Lower Ninth Ward, the Backyard Gardeners Network runs community gardens and offers education and involvement opportunities.

Two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Jenga Mwendo saw potential for rebirth in an overgrown lot in the Lower Ninth Ward, where she’d grown up. Calling on residents’ not-too-distant tradition of backyard gardening and historic sense of self-reliance, Mwendo rallied her neighbors to clear the lot and plant some seeds.

Soon after, she founded the Backyard Gardeners Network, a nonprofit that runs two community gardens—the Ernst Garden and the Guerrilla Garden—and encouraged residents to get involved. In addition to overseeing the maintenance and use of both spaces, the nonprofit hosts volunteer groups, organizes workshops and events, gives away seeds, and runs a donation- and grant-funded resource center that includes a tool-lending shed for people who want to garden but don’t have the supplies.

Mwendo, 38, was born and raised in New Orleans, but left to pursue a career as a computer animator in New York. In 2005, just months before Hurricane Katrina would ravage the city, breaking the levees and submerging many houses under up to 12 feet of water, Mwendo purchased a home in the Holy Cross area of the Lower Ninth Ward as an investment property.

While Mwendo’s house was not destroyed in the storm like many of her neighbors’, it did suffer water damage from the flooding. And so, in 2007, she moved with her daughter back to her hometown and set to work repairing the house. Pretty soon, she turned her attention to the community as well.

“I decided to stay put and help to revitalize the community and saw the opportunity to do it through gardening and food,” she says.

With more than 1,200 restaurants citywide—even more than were in operation before the storm—some parts of New Orleans are flourishing. But while the number of supermarkets in the city has returned to pre-hurricane levels (around 32), many residents still lack access to fresh and healthy foods. In cities nationwide, the average number of residents per grocery store is 8,800. In New Orleans, however, a recent report showed that number between 16,000 and 18,000, up from 12,000 before the storm.