Through the Galvez Garden, the NOLA Artist Incubator offers educational programming to the community focused on creating sustainable art, urban vegetable gardening, and backyard composting.
- Ethical, Sustainable Permaculture
- Educational and Community Building
- Safe Green Spaces for Urban Agriculture
Transforming Spaces And Growing Green
The Galvez Garden is not-for-profit, non commercial endeavor solely focused on benefiting the community. NOLA Artist Incubator maintains and operates the Galvez Garden and facilitates educational and Artist-in-Residence programming on site. Specific goals of the garden are to be welcoming to the community, safe and inviting for children and the elderly, and to serve as a demonstration and teaching garden for the neighborhood.
Initiated in aims to fight blight and promote shared community spaces, the Galvez Garden offers services as a teaching garden and compost drop off site. Neighbors are welcomed to learn about composting, growing vegetables, native landscaping, stormwater management solutions, and other permaculture projects on site.
The site is designed to mitigate flooding and act as a teaching garden, exploring a range of gardening techniques. The Galvez Garden is an opportunity to share ecological and economical ways New Orleanians can take on a more active role in storm water management and benefit from urban gardens.
Growing Food at Galvez Garden
As awardees of the 2023 Cultivating the Community Garden Grant, the Galvez Garden aims to increase availability of fresh fruits and vegetables within underserved communities. NOLA Artist Incubator is one of six award recipients from Louisiana and South Carolina. These funds will allow NOLA Artist Incubator to increase the number of families that can be fed by their community garden. With shared goals to increase access to local fresh healthy foods and food choices within food insecure communities, we are elated to have been given the opportunity to transform the Galvez Garden and have funding for tools to provide organically grown produce to the St. Roch community.
We look forward to growing a productive vegetable garden area that grows food for our community, while offering inclusive opportunities for community members to learn about gardening. The new garden beds provide a space for people who want to grow food in our garden to do so. The height of these beds is more accessible to people, making it more inclusive for elderly neighbors to participate in learning about and growing their own food at the Galvez Garden. With accessible garden beds, community members are welcomed to build gardening skills in the newly configured vegetable gardening area. In addition we also offer educational programming to the community, focused on creating sustainable art, urban vegetable gardening, and backyard composting. We look forward to collaborating with more schools and organizations to offer enhanced programming and welcome new community partnerships.
This project is made possible with support from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) —Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and the Community Resources Connection (CRC) Inc.
Community Resources Connection (CRC) has collaborated with the United States Department of Agriculture to increase availability of fresh fruits and vegetables within underserved communities via the “Cultivating the Community” food project.
Cultivating the Community food project will assist with increasing the accessibility of local, quality healthy food choices by distributing dollars to local community organizations to purchase materials and supplies to establish community gardens.
Building Community
Collaborating For Collective Good
The Galvez Garden is affiliated with Compost NOW and is proud to be listed among several registered drop off sites throughout the city. We offer compost drop off on Sundays from 10:00-1:00 to divert food waste from our landfills. The community is welcome to drop off frozen food waste in the bins located on site.
Galvez Garden Native Plant Initiative
As recipients of a Beautification Grant from Keep Louisiana Beautiful, the NOLA Artist Incubator was selected to receive a grant in support of the organization’s belief in the power of art to transform spaces. In solidarity with the purpose of the Keep Louisiana Beautiful Beautification Grant, the purpose of the Galvez Garden Native Plant Initiative is to improve upon our beautiful, well- maintained public garden to be a source of community pride and improve the appearance of the St. Roch neighborhood. We also believe that people are less likely to litter in areas that are well maintained and beautiful, so by improving our existing public pocket park in a highly visible area, we will reduce litter in our community. Our project aimed to add more native plants, (specifically Louisiana Super Plants to the main entrance and sidewalk area of the Galvez Garden); to add a bamboo privacy wall and hardscaping to define the entrance; and to add signage to the garden. Native plants have the ability to pull and store excess carbon, in addition to adding beauty to the site. By adding more native plants we are directly helping the environment, preventing water run-off, and improving air quality.
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NOLA Artist Incubator 