Crown Heights Homestead Launches Community Garden For Local Youth

by CrownHeights.info

The Crown Heights Community Garden, a new project for the youth of Crown Heights is just a one-minute walk from 770, and will be the ultimate educational experience for children.

“Children will be able to bring home their own grown produce,” Daniel Yeroshalmi, the creator of the project said. “And their own grown shabbos flowers as well as a head full of knowledge on gardening.”

The story of the Garden begins with Yeroshalmi who spent years and years trying to grow plants in his front yard, finding the soil to be just too terrible. No amount of chemicals could fix it, and so last year he made the bold move to remove all the soil that was there.

Almost 1000 cubic feet of the densest dirt he had ever held, each bucket weighing upwards of about 80 pounds, he removed enough soil to fill a construction dumpster, and then some. With nothing but a hand shovel, day in and day out and using any free time he had, he worked to fulfill his dream of growing a beautiful garden.

He was soon joined by his close friend Mordechai, and over the course of the next 10 months they continued to dig, seeing progress bit by bit.

After what felt like years, they finally finished the digging and began to put up a wooden retaining wall to maintain the integrity of the surrounding soil. With that done, they took delivery of over a dozen pallets of high-grade soil. Finally, after 10 months of painful back-breaking labor, and thousands and thousands of dollars they had finally completed their project.

Now with a beautiful garden – the biggest and nicest kosher garden in Crown Heights – Daniel has decided to make this into a community garden, to better benefit the children of our community and educate them on the wonders of Hashem.

“We’re trying to open the community garden this summer,” Yeroshalmi said, noting that they have launched a campaign to cover the costs f opening the garden to the children of the community. “We want to reach our goal soon after Pesach, with all proceeds going directly to helping the children of our community.”

The help fund this amazing community project, Click Here