Idaho Office for Refugees | Refugee Gardens

Refugee Gardens

The Synagogue Garden

The garden at the Synagogue is the one that Boiseians seem to notice most often. It’s located very close to the road on Latah Street, beside the Ahavath Beth Israel Synagogue. This garden was founded in 2004 mostly for Somali Bantu arrivals. The Somali Bantu were traditionally farmers, and they love to garden! This garden is perfect for them because it’s located next to an apartment complex where many Somali Bantu and other refugees live, and they can walk to the gardens. Somali Bantu especially love to grow corn. In Somalia they used a hard variety of corn, which was ground into flour to make a traditional food called ugali, something like polenta.

There are also a few gardeners from Afghanistan, Russia, and Sudan. The garden is managed by a member of the synagogue, and volunteers help out at several work days per year. There are spaces for 18 families.

The Silver Sage Girls Scouts Garden
Our biggest community garden is the Girl Scouts Garden, located behind the office building of the Silver Sage Girl Scouts council on Etheridge Road, off of Fairview Avenue.
This garden was originally built by Americorps volunteers and has been used by refugee gardeners since 2004. This garden was founded especially for older refugees, and many of the folks working here are senior citizens. The garden gives them a great opportunity to get outdoors and stay active while their children and other family members are at work. The garden also has some younger members, including working parents, teens and kids.

The gardeners at this garden are mostly Bosnians and Meskhetian Turks from Russia. They enjoy growing a few ethnic crops such as Gypsy Peppers, a variety of yellow bell peppers that they enjoyed in Bosnia, root crops like turnips and potatoes, and lots and lots of tomatoes and cucumbers. Many of the ladies who work in this garden had much larger gardens in their home countries and like to can and pickle some of their veggies for use in the winter.

The Girl Scouts Garden has 28 family plots on a total of about one acre. In 2008 we expanded this garden by 6 plots and built a small greenhouse and a composting bin. In 2009 and 2010, families from newer ethnic groups have joined this garden, including a Colombian family and several Bhutanese families.

The Somali Bantu Community Farm
The Somali Bantu Community Farm began in 2007. The farm is located on about 3 acres behind the Camille Beckman facility in Eagle, ID. The owners of this business, Foad and Susan Roghani, donate the use of land and water to us.

The Somali Bantu Community organized this project themselves before they began collaborating with Global Gardens, and we have mainly assisted in the marketing aspects of the farm. There are about 15 Somali Bantu families who work at the farm regularly, and many more who come out occasionally and have enjoyed fresh food from this plentiful garden. The farmers also sometimes distribute produce to families through a monthly food distribution in cooperation with the Idaho Food Bank.

The Somali Bantu have recieved grants from the Heifer International's New Immigrant Farming Initiative and the USDA's Farmers Market Promotion Program, which have enabled them to put in a new irrigation system and purchase seeds, farm and market supplies, and a farm pickup truck. Thanks to these grants, the Somali Bantu Community Farm is financially independent from Global Gardens, and the farmers have been learning to manage grants and a farm budget.

The farm produces a mix of traditional African crops and more typical American crops. As a result, many of the farmers have tasted and learned to cook with new foods, and our market customers have tasted, enjoyed, and come back every week asking for "mchicha," a traditional African leafy green!

The Somali Bantu farmers market at the Capital City Public Market on Saturday mornings during the growing season, and run a weekly CSA .

The Somali Bantu Community Farm has gotten a lot of press coverage, too. The farmers were filmed for a short spot on Channel 6, and had articles in the Idaho Statesman and the Idaho Business Review.

The Hillview Garden

The Hillview Garden is located on Ustick Road at the Hillview United Methodist Church. It was originally built as an Eagle Scout project. Members of the church and other volunteers help manage this garden. There are raised beds for 10 families, mostly from Russia.

The Allumbaugh Farm

Before & After Photos 2008

The Allumbaugh Farm was brand new in 2008. It’s located on Allumbaugh Street, on land owned by the Family Church of Peace and at the residence of the church’s pastor, Marcus Beresford and his wife Melissa. When they moved into there house, there was a large weedy field out back, conveniently situated next to an irrigation channel. With the help of many volunteers, including refugees, Master Gardeners, and members of the United Way’s DIRT Team, we dug out the weeds in the spring of 2008 and prepared it to be our newest veggie garden.

This farm is managed almost entirely by members of African Community Development, a local support group for African refugees including Burundis, Congolese, Rwandans, and others. There are also a few Russian families working there.

Members share one large garden space. Many of the members live within walking distance of the garden, and come to us with agricultural training and experience from Africa. Many participants are new arrivals and speak only a little English, but garden leaders report that members of the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups are able to work peacefully together in this garden, despite a long history of violent conflict in their home countries. Men, women, and kids of all ages work in the Allumbaugh garden.

The Allumbaugh gardeners have participated in the Tuesday night and Saturday morning farmer's markets. Our Roma tomatoes and eggplants were customer favorites. We grew many many tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers at Allumbaugh. We participated in the Local Foods Dinner as a featured grower, where we helped prepare and serve the salad and our banana peppers were featured as a special appetizer.

In 2009, we expanded the farm onto an adjacent property, enlarging it by 2 acres. Unfortunately, we weren't able to continue using these two acres in 2010, and are in search of a larger plot, in Boise, for these farmers. Many of the farmers have participated in a winter training course offered by Global Gardens, Farm Planning for New American Farmers.

The Jordan Street Garden

The Jordan Street Garden was founded in 2009 by members of the Veterans Park Neighborhood association. They decided to convert a vacant lot into a garden. It's located at 30th and Jordan, near the Davis Park apartments where many refugees live. The garden serves 15 families including African, Eastern European, Bhutanese, and Syrian families, and has a children's garden, too. This garden serves many moms and kids, who are able to walk to the garden from home.

The King of Glory Garden

King of Glory Lutheran Church also began a community garden in 2009. Dedicated members of this church converted the unused space behind their church into a garden, spending many weekends hauling compost, picking rocks, tilling, and setting up irrigation. King of Glory is located on Maple Grove, and is also very close to the housing where some of the gardeners live. This garden offers spaces to a mix of refugee families of several ethnicities, including Burundis, Somali Bantu, and Russians, as well as American members of the church. This ethnic diversity allows everyone to learn from eachother and practice English at the garden.

King of Glory has also been very generous in allowing us to use their fabulous, industrial sized kitchen, for cooking workshops and our first annual harvest dinner. This wonderful space allows many participants to prepare food together with ample space for all to work, and gives participants the opportunity to share recipes and to learn new ways to cook the bouty that our farms and gardens have to offer.

The Star Farm

Global Gardens Incubator Farm in Star is new in 2010. An incubator farm is a place where new farmers can borrow land and equipment, practice farming, and learn from eachother for a few years before they begin an independent farm enterprise. We have 12 families participating this year, each on a one-acre plot. These families have been working super hard to keep up with this much garden, often involving both parents and all the kids. It's been great to see so many moms and kids involved! The Star Farm property is lent to the program by Idaho Power.

The Star farmers have been participating in the Capital City Public Market downtown on Saturdays, hosting a farm stand out at the farm on Fridays from 5:30 - 8 pm, and selling to the Boise Coop and various local restaurants including the Bittercreek Alehouse, Red Feather, Willy B's, Guido's Pizza, Bardenay, and Sully's in Star. We offer marketing support as part of the program, including making contacts with restaurant customers, assisting farmers with invoicing and deliveries, and training them to work the farmers' market. The farmers keep all of the income that they earn, with several ove them earning more than $1000 already this season.