PLANTING THE SEEDS

Seeds Planting the

After successfully creating a program to deliver fresh local produce to New Yorkers in need, one Manteo native is bringing her project home to Roanoke Island.

PHOTO BY CORY GODWIN / STORY BY ARABELLA SAUNDERS

On an early autumn afternoon in 2013, Michelle Lewis walked into a Social Services offi ce near New Haven, Connecticut. Michelle – 31 at the time Only a year later, Michelle and her team had tripled the amount of beds in the garden. And the story didn’t end there. In 2018, Michelle moved back home to Manteo to help take care of her mother. She Seeds and a graduate student at Yale University – was having a hard time putting food on the table. “I was the proverbial broke grad student and someone asked, ‘Why don’t you try to get public assistance?’” Michelle says. “I wasn’t thrilled about it, but I was like, okay, I’ll go.” But Michelle left the offi ce that day feeling confused, frustrated and a little shocked. An employee informed her that her monthly earnings were $50 too much to qualify for assistance. Their suggestions? Work fewer hours – or have a baby. Michelle took neither option. With help from her family, she was able to feed herself and graduate with a master’s degree later that year. Seven years later, Michelle stands in a greenhouse in her hometown of Manteo, watering a spider plant and musing about how that experience never left her mind – and how it inspired her to found the Peace Garden Project. still maintained her role as executive director of the Peace Garden Project as well, and helped the organization grow from a distance. She also began scoping out places to establish the project on the Outer Banks. After a bit of time, that search proved fruitful – and this past April, the Peace Garden Project offi cially opened on Roanoke Island. The organization currently maintains three gardens in Manteo, with the largest one on Fannin Mill Road. There, Michelle and a team of community volunteers grow pole beans, sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon, okra, basil and more. From the beginning, Michelle set up harvest days where volunteers picked and packaged food from the gardens for community members to pick up free of charge. This past summer, in addition to harvest days, the organization teamed up with Farmers to Families – a program sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture – to give away additional boxes of fresh produce. The Peace Garden Project is now a All told, the Peace Garden Project has 501c3 nonprofi t with a mission to promote distributed more than 37,000 pounds of community understanding and combat food insecurity by providing spaces for All told, the Peace Garden fresh food to the Outer Banks community over the past two and a half months. people to grow and receive fresh, free Project has distributed more “We don’t make people prove their produce. Unlike traditional community gardens where each plot is maintained by a specifi c individual or family, with the Peace Garden Project, everyone works the land than 37,000 pounds of fresh food to the Outer Banks community over the past two poverty,” Michelle says about the way the program works. “People don’t have to fi ll out paperwork, and they don’t have to justify to us why they’re there – because together at locations in New York and on and a half months. you never know an individual’s situation or Roanoke Island. circumstance.” But getting to that point with the The organization also hosts a Youth project wasn’t exactly a straight line. Following her graduation Leadership Institute for K-12 students that helps the kids get from Yale, Michelle initially moved to the Catskills to pastor at a involved in combating local food insecurity while also learning church. Upon arrival, she learned that the church owned dozens valuable skills both in and outside of the gardens. This past of acres of land that was lying fallow and racking up expensive summer 12 students participated in a seven-week camp led landscaping fees. She suggested building a garden, but was by Michelle and two interns from Duke Divinity School. The unsuccessful after members of the congregation expressed institute met six to nine hours a week, and participants received concerns about the produce potentially being stolen. $600 to $800 stipends and new Chromebooks thanks to a Michelle gracefully accepted defeat, but like the afternoon grant from The Conservation Fund. at the social services offi ce, the experience stuck with her. Looking ahead, Michelle’s long-term goal for the Peace Shortly thereafter, she applied and was accepted to the Harvard Garden Project is to expand it across the East Coast, with Kennedy School for Executive Education with plans to develop self-sustaining chapters that are able to meet the specifi c needs a project that combatted food insecurity. of the communities they’re serving. “The program focused on organizing people around a In the short term, Michelle would like to expand the Roanoke common theme and learning to tell your story – so that when Island Peace Garden Project by adding new gardens in Manteo. you tell that story people understand what your vision is,” She’s also in the process of developing a buy-a-box, give-a-box Michelle explains. program, and she hopes to run more youth programs going By 2016, Michelle had moved to New Rochelle, New York. forward. Once there, she discovered a long-forgotten garden across “There’s all these ways that we try to put people in groups the street from the church she worked. This time, her plans or boxes, but at the end of the day we all have the same basic for a community garden fell into place. Months later, the Peace needs and desires,” Michelle says. “That’s one of the main points Garden Project was founded with only six raised garden beds we try to drive home with the Peace Garden Project – and that’s and a handful of volunteers. why all people are welcome in our spaces.”

As founder of the Peace Garden Project, Manteo resident Michelle Lewis recently teamed up with Farmers to Families in order to distribute fresh, free boxes of produce to those in need.