Whole Foods Helping Backyard Growers Grow 

Pigeon Cove plant worker nominated group for grant

• By Joann Mackenzie Staff Writer 
•  
  • Nov 30, 2017

Gloucester’s Backyard Growers has grown yet another garden, this one with the help of Whole Foods Markets' Whole Cities Foundation.

Backyard Growers was awarded a $5,000 Community First Grant by the nonprofit foundation, one of three founded to support thriving, self-sustaining local community food systems.

The money, received earlier this fall, has helped add a garden of raised beds — this one in Willowood public housing on Maplewood Avenue — to Backyard Growers' 67 edible garden beds already in place and thriving in low-income housing communities throughout the city.

Aria McElhenny, Backyard Growers' development director, who was a participant in the development of nearby Burnham’s Field Community Garden, says the Willowood plot, which she described as formerly a wasteland of weed, scrub and rubbish, “has been transformed” — with the help of Whole Foods volunteers— into fertilized beds that will be ready for planting in the spring.

One of those Whole Food’s volunteers, Lee Kane, who goes by the title “Mission, Culture and Higher Purpose Coach” told the Times that despite his 66 years, he loved rolling up his sleeves and “getting down and dirty with the kids digging the garden beds.”

Kane says that “Backyard Growers is the kind of organization that is very much in line with our vision.”

Whole Foods learned about Backyard Growers through staff members at its Pigeon Cove fish processing plant, in particular, Gloucester resident Carol Styczko, who recommended it for the grant.

“Gloucester is a fascinating place for a bunch of reasons,” said Kane, "and Lara (Lepionka, founder and executive director of Backyard Growers) is amazing, an absolute dynamo.”

Lepionka could not be reached for comment, says McElhenny, because she is doing what comes naturally: living in a tent and building an edible garden for a community in some remote, unknown location.

Like Lepionka, Kane says that Whole Cities Foundation — which has built stores in economically challenged cities including Detroit and Newark, New Jersey — likes to gets its hands dirty.

“Our model is to go into communities with limited access to healthy food and work from the ground up, learning what they need. We say, 'It’s your community, you know it, you tell us what you need.'" In Gloucester, he says, it was easier because “we knew the community from working with the Pigeon Cove plant for so many years.”

With a staff of about 55, the Pigeon Cove processing facility distributes seafood throughout Whole Foods' Northeast region of 40 stores.  “We buy as much as we can from day boats,” Kane told the Times, “and we have the highest sustainability standards.”

Kane says that Whole Foods is looking for more ways to help Backyard Growers. “You can tell by the way I'm talking that I'm passionate about this when I say that we want to be more to the Gloucester community in any way we can.”

McElhenny, who has been writing grants for Backyard Growers since its founding some 10 years ago, and recently joined the staff as the organization’s first official development director, sees Whole Foods, through its Whole Cities Foundation, supporting the expansion of its innovative programs in Gloucester schools, including one “exciting one” at O’Maley Innovation Middle School.

“The kids will be growing wheat, milling and thrashing it, turning it into flour and baking bread with it.”

"There are so many ways kids can learn from a program like this,” says McElhenny.

McElhenny says that Whole Foods has always been supportive of Backyard Growers. With support like theirs, she says, “Backyard Growers just won’t stop growing.”

Joann MacKenzie may be contacted at 978-675-2707, or jomackenzie@gloucestertimes.com.