We're growing all over the community

Our school and community gardens provide opportunities to grow fresh produce, build relationships and strengthen the island’s food system.

Island Community Farm Located off Green End Avenue in Middletown on Aquidneck Land Trust conservation land, Island Community Farm hosts 46 community garden plots, a micro-farm (Hawk and Handsaw Herbals), a permaculture food forest, and a perennial pollinator garden. — **Island Community Farm**
Located off Green End Avenue in Middletown on Aquidneck Land Trust conservation land, Island Community Farm hosts 46 community garden plots, a micro-farm (Hawk and Handsaw Farm), a permaculture food forest, and a perennial pollinator garden.

Claiborne Pell Elementary School In 2018, we partnered with the Newport elementary school to build raised garden beds where ten classrooms enjoyed weekly garden lessons and students learned (in English and Spanish) how to plant, care for, and harvest organic fruits and vegetables. — **Claiborne Pell Elementary School**
In 2018, we partnered with the Newport elementary school to build raised garden beds where ten classrooms enjoyed weekly garden lessons and students learned (in English and Spanish) how to plant, care for, and harvest organic fruits and vegetables.

Great Friends Community Garden Located on the corner of Farewell and Marlborough Streets in Newport, the garden offers 24 growing spaces. A garden plot is held for the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center Summer Camp where URI Master Gardeners teach gardening skills to summer camp students. — **Great Friends Community Garden**
Located on the corner of Farewell and Marlborough Streets in Newport, the garden offers 24 growing spaces. A garden plot is held for the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center Summer Camp where summer camp students learn gardening to grow food.

Florence Gray Community Garden The Florence Gray Center on York Street in Newport provides eleven growing spaces where families, individuals, and organizations rent garden beds. This year, due to restrictions to reduce the spread of covid-19, the gardens could not open in their traditional way, so the produce grown was distributed to the community. — **Florence Gray Community Garden**
The Florence Gray Center on York Street in Newport provides eleven growing spaces where families, individuals, and organizations rent garden beds.

“Clearly, nature calls to something very deep in us…The role that nature plays in health and healing becomes even more critical for people working long days in windowless offices, for those living in city neighborhoods without access to green spaces, for children in city schools or for those in institutional settings such as nursing homes. The effects of nature’s qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological.”

— Oliver Sacks

Our gardens

Aquidneck Community Table has worked with many partners to build eight gardens on the island, providing spaces to grow healthy food, opportunities to connect and learn in nature and build friendships and community bonds as we work alongside our neighbors. School gardens provide students hands-on learning opportunities that enrich curriculum and build life skills.

ACT has helped to build and manage these local gardens:

Island Community Farm, 2012
Great Friends Meeting House, 2016
Florence Gray Center, 2017
Pell Elementary School, 2017
The East Bay MET School, 2018
Park Holm Senior Center, 2020
Bike Newport’s Big Blue Bike Barn, 2020