Cultivate KC’s Urban Grown Farms and Gardens Tour takes you to the city’s secret gardens

Kansas City’s urban gardens are pretty much everywhere — schools, pottery studios, abandoned lots — but in many cases, you’d never know these innovative projects existed unless you were looking for them. That’s because it takes only a small space to make an impact on the food supply — we’re talking thousands of pounds of organic chow each year, from spicy mustard greens and heirloom tomatoes to tilapia.

Featuring 31 urban gardens in the Kansas City area, Cultivate KC’s Urban Grown Farms and Gardens Tour gives you the chance to get to know these pioneering producers on Saturday, June 25, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, June 26, from noon to 5 p.m. After a few stops on this self-guided excursion, maybe you’ll be inspired to put your yard to use. Here are four gardens to see this weekend.

Sion Garden (3823 Locust Street)
If you think all kids hate vegetables, a quick conversation with Sion Garden coordinator Nicole Routh just might change your mind. After gardening as a hobby for many years, Routh now works with students from Montessori through eighth grade at Notre Dame de Sion School (including her daughter, a seventh-grader), showing them how to grow the food that is served in their school cafeteria. For many of the kids, the experience is thrilling.

“The kids are always excited to see the progress on their plants,” Routh tells me. “I’ve literally seen children jumping up and down screaming with delight because their broccoli grew three inches. They’re just over the moon with joy, and it’s so cool to see.”

The fact that the cafeteria here features a full kitchen also helps build enthusiasm – as does their school-lunch program, Future Foodies, which is overseen by Jackie and Ted Habiger, owners of Room 39. This leads to dishes that are as inventive as they are delicious.

“We started growing a lot of purple vegetables, because our school colors are white and purple,” Routh says. “Last fall we served this wonderful pasta salad that had purple carrots and purple peppers and purple basil, and the kids thought that was so cool.”

You can hear from the kids firsthand this weekend; several students will be on hand to show guests around their garden.

Nile Valley Aquaponics (29th Street & Wabash Avenue)
Big things are happening at the one-acre lot on 29th Street just one block west of Prospect Avenue. Like many areas in the urban core, the neighborhood is a food desert — the nearest grocery store to Nile Valley is an Aldi a few miles away. But owner Dre Taylor hopes to change that — and reclaim the neighborhood — by raising 100,000 pounds of food per year.

As Kansas City’s first aquaponics greenhouse, Nile Valley features three trenches that will hold 75,000 gallons of water for raising tilapia, with vegetables grown on tiers above the tanks. Volunteers have also worked to install garden boxes and chicken coops. Eventually the site will create jobs and free access to food within the community — as well as learning opportunities for Taylor’s Males to Men program, which provides mentorship and guidance to boys.

“It’s nice to feel like we’re taking a piece of this neighborhood back,” Taylor recently told Cultivate KC.

Greene’s Acre Organic Gardens (8012 1/2 West 55th Terrace, Merriam)
Located on a 19th-century homestead in suburban Kansas, Greene’s Acre was inspired by the “food not lawns” movement in 2010. Since then, owner Steve Greene has expanded his garden to include raised beds, greenhouses, bees and hens — and the 5,000-square-foot compound is largely self-sustaining, thanks to compost and rainwater collection.

Most of the farm has also been sustainably constructed using landfill-bound reclaimed materials, such as cinder blocks, crates and pallets. A proponent of what he has called “the local and organic revolution,” Greene is proud of what he’s accomplished on one acre, and he hopes to inspire others to do the same. This weekend, the farm will feature live music, face painting and games.

Woodland City KC (1804 East 36th Street)
On his 7,000-square-foot lot in the Ivanhoe neighborhood, Neal Rudisill and his partner, Lisa Hummel, are proving that urban gardens are good for the body as well as for the pocketbook. Specializing in greens mixes, Woodland sells directly to restaurants, providing the financial viability that will allow them to tackle their next goal: improving food access within the community.

“We want to use this as a case study to show that it can be economically sustainable to do this,” Rudisill tells me.

After earning a nursing degree from UMKC, Rudisill learned about gardening in small spaces and marketing during his year and a half as an apprentice at Cultivate KC’s Gibbs Road Farm. Now he’s dedicated to bringing people back to Ivanhoe — this weekend, he looks forward to showing off the neighborhood’s possibilities, including houses so cheap they’re basically free.

“There’s a lot going on here,” he says. “There’s plenty of opportunity if people want to do small-scale agriculture. If someone is interested, they should come on the farm tour and see a part of the city that has been left alone for a while but is redeveloping itself around agriculture, health and wellness and community.”

For a full list of locations on the tour, see cultivatekc.org/urbangrowntour.