THE GIVING GARDEN: REALIZING COMMUNITY AND FOSTERING A CONNECTION TO THE LAND THROUGH CO-DESIGN IN DULUTH, MINNESOTA

Communities with Healthy Food Priority Areas (HFPA) across the U.S. decreased the quality of life and well-being of individuals. Duluth, Minnesota suffers from several HFPAs. In response, a local organization, “the St. Mark Giving Garden”, promotes healthy living, centering African American resiliency and traditional identity through the communal production of culturally relevant foods. The organization started a community garden in an existing garden site to remedy the food disparities in the Central and East Hillside neighborhoods of Duluth. After success in the 2022 growing season, the organization looked to expand into a new, larger site. The St. Mark Giving Garden utilized co-design to develop this future community garden site. A leadership committee was organized including members from multiple community stakeholders and partner organizations. This committee defined the goals of the project and then began holding community design sessions to begin the development process. Co-design places the end-user at the foundation of a design project. In this community garden project, the Central and East Hillside neighborhoods became an integral part of the design process; community members presented concerns, desires, and additions to elevate the project and completely benefit the community. Co-design provides a powerful opportunity for generating an effective product that holistically meets all of the end-users needs. This project compared a community garden design draft produced without co-design and a design produced with co-design. The co-designed product is superior in several ways relative to the preliminary design: it maximized the type of space by decreasing the area of communal space by 30% and increasing the area of exercise and performance space by 8000% and 600% respectively; minimized the number of unnecessary elements, such as eliminating more than 50% of fencing; and increased the number of connections between elements by 200%. These improvements are more reflective of the values and needs of the community and assist in better serving the community.