In Dallas’ food deserts, community gardens ease but don’t end food insecurity
In Dallas’ food deserts, community gardens ease but don’t end food insecurity
To be more effective, cities need to support these community gardens, as demonstrated by an innovative program in Austin, experts say.
Neyssa Shockley stands on her family s land in Dolphin Heights. “You won’t meet a person around here who doesn’t recognize my father’s name,” said Shockley, 31. Her father was James “Skip” Shockley, an activist and member of the Dallas Black Panther Party. “Community meant everything to him.” His final request before he died last May was to turn the family land into a community garden.(Nitashia Johnson)
She and a couple of other residents eventually decided it was time to take back the neighborhood. They formed the Dolphin Heights Neighborhood Association with Hill as president.
She lived next to an empty lot and in 2006 a secret angel, as she calls it, bought the lot and donated it to the neighborhood association. She told the story of what happened next. I said OK, build a house. And the question came up, Do you want someone living that close to you? she said. And I thought about it and said, Then what are we going to do with it? So we all got together and came up with the idea of a community garden.