Growing Power’s Chicago Projects Office officially opened in February of 2002 to manage resource development and the technical assistance needed to assist emerging Community Food Centers and urban and small farm projects in the metropolitan Chicago area.  By bringing together food related activities that are typically dispersed, an urban farm as a community food center allows for an integrated approach to addressing food security, ecological, nutrition and public health issues.

The Chicago Avenue Community Garden at Cabrini-Green

Established 2002

Located at the intersection of W. Chicago Avenue & N. Hudson Avenue, Chicago, IL 60610. 

Since 2002, Growing Power has worked in collaboration with Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church to facilitate the Chicago Avenue Community Garden.   In 2001, Fourth Presbyterian Church bought property in the Cabrini-Green community on Chicago Avenue between Hudson and Cleveland.  The purchase of this former unkempt basketball court was an outgrowth of Fourth Church’s forty-year involvement with the children and families living in Cabrini-Green.  As the neighborhood transitions from low-income “projects” to mixed-income housing, the overarching goal of the community garden is to help facilitate a thriving diverse community and ensuring that present residents are not cast aside in this process of transformation.  As the first step in this important endeavor, Fourth Church with Growing Power’s help, transformed the Chicago Avenue site into a community garden, as a way to strengthen the church’s relationship with the families and children in the Cabrini community. 

The garden is located in the quickly changing neighborhood adjacent to the Cabrini-Green row houses.  The garden is a traditional community garden with free plots allocated to individual gardeners.  Since its inception, Growing Power has supplied the materials, assisted in designing and building the space, served on the garden’s planning committee, provided daily staff and technical assistance during the growing season, and developed and implemented a youth curriculum for neighborhood kids and new gardeners.  

The gardens 36 biological worm system raised beds were built on top of concrete and have been abundantly producing fresh vegetables and fruits.  This garden is designed to create dialogue, community engagement and empowerment as well as introduce a source for fresh, safe, healthy, homegrown produce to the community.  

The site is also the gathering space for many of the children living in the neighborhood.  Garden staff provide a multi-disciplinary curriculum for the two-hundred plus children who visit the garden during the season.  Children have the opportunity to learn math through counting and adding tomatoes harvested from the Pizza Garden and to read poems under the pumpkin teepee. 

Grant Park "Art on the Farm" Urban Agriculture Potager

Established 2005

Located in Grant Park at the intersection of E. Congress Parkway & S. Columbus Drive, Chicago, IL 60605.  

In partnership with the Chicago Park District and Moore Landscapes, Inc., Growing Power created a 20,000 square foot urban farm on Chicago’s lakefront adjacent to Buckingham Fountain and Lincoln Memorial in Grant Park.   Over 150 varieties of heirloom vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers are grown at the urban farm in the heart of downtown Chicago.  

Our partnership demonstrates that the social benefits of urban agriculture reach beyond local food miles and food security but also encompass youth economic development and re-establishing biodiversity through the production of organic vegetables, herbs and other edibles in a city space.

A major focus of the program is job preparedness for young people. Farm interns work together to cultivate, weed, plant and harvest vegetables, herbs, and flowers that are grown in the edible potager garden.  Also of great importance is the project’s impact on a city’s policy regarding urban farming.  This project seeks to quantify the commercial viability of urban agriculture both in economics and production.

Using farming as a hands-on teaching tool, youth are challenged both mentally and physically, gaining a broad range of experiences from observation and decision-making to physical fitness and culinary appreciation.  Interns gain the valuable and unique skill of learning how to produce something, creating a whole host of entrepreneurial opportunities for their futures.  In addition to regular farm activities, farm interns experience marketing produce and value-added products at small community farmers' market, building customer service and entrepreneurial skills needed by both farmers and artists.        

The Jackson Park Urban Farm and Community Allotment Garden

Established 2007

Located in Jackson Park at the intersection of S. Cornell Drive & E. Marquette Drive, Chicago, IL 60649.     

In collaboration with the Chicago Park District, Growing Power manages the Jackson Park Urban Farm and Community Allotment Garden in Chicago.  This half-acre site is used as a community garden for local gardeners and as a model-urban farm for Growing Power to supply fresh-produce to Chicago’s south side.  At the farm, community members learn gardening basics from Growing Power’s staff and have the opportunity to farm their own plot.

The Jackson Park Urban Farm includes space for Growing Power to grow produce in raised beds, training and education of community residents who use allotment plots, youth development, community outreach through education programs and the availability of locally grown fresh, safe and healthy food that exceeds certified organic standards.

The growing beds use Growing Power’s Living Biological Worm System approach and is an active learning tool to teach youth and adults the importance of closed-loop systems and how to grow food in urban soil which is often depleted or contaminated.  Learning how to compost using both aerobic and anaerobic digestion methods and the production of valuable vermicompost and compost tea is stressed and part of the hands-on training and demonstration both with gardeners and our youth. 

View a slide show of the Jackson Park farm created by our wonderful volunteers at the McCormick Foundation,

Interested in gardening at Jackson Park?  Please email Laurell Sims at laurell@growingpower.org or call 773.486.6005.  Download a 2009 Jackson Park Plot Application here.

Learn more about composting, vermicomposting, and growing your own vegetables at a Jackson Park Workshop.

Additional Programs and Projects:

• Youth Corps  l  In Chicago, we provide job training to over 40 teens after-school and during the summer.  Teens learn from a multi-disciplinary curriculum that focuses on growing, science, art and micro-enterprise development.

• School Gardens   l   Chicago staff assists school gardens at Hatch Elementary in Oak Park, John Marshall Metro High School in Chicago, and Perspectives High School Campus at Calumet.

• Just... Good... Food  l   We provide sustainably and justly grown food to Chicagoland through the Farm-to-City Market Basket program and selling produce at Farmer's Markets from June through December. 

• Food Policy Initiatives  l  Check out the Chicago Food Policy Council and other great policy initiatives we're helping out with in Chicago. 

Milwaukee Headquarters:  5500 W. Silver Spring Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53218

Tel. 414.527.1546 l Fax 414.527.1908

Chicago Projects Office:  2215 W. North Avenue, Chicago, IL 60647

Tel. 773.486.6005