2013 has been an incredible year for Planting Justice!! We’ve increased the number of urban permaculture gardens we’ve built to more than 230, and we’ve grown to a full-time staff of 20 amazing leaders!  I want to share some victories that meant a lot to me from this past year: 

• In July, the Planting Justice Team worked with Beyond Emancipation in deep East Oakland to build a vegetable garden that has been incorporated into their culinary training program, GROW Oakland. The three raised beds and perennial food forest is providing healthy local foodfor the young mothers between the ages of 16 and 24 who live adjacent to the new garden. Nine of these youth graduated recently from the culinary training program run in combination with this garden and now have the skills needed to find a job in the competitive world of culinary arts.  Wish them luck on their endeavours!  Check out Beyond Emancipation and the important work that they do.

• And in November, history was made! The Planting Justice team worked with Beth Waitkus and the Insight Garden Program to build four raised beds on the grounds of the H-Unit at San Quentin State Prison – the only current vegetable garden inside a CA Department of Corrections Institution. Over four days, men enrolled in the Insight Garden Programhelped break up asphalt on the prison grounds to make way for the new vegetable garden and put in some much-needed hard work on the construction of the perimeter fence, filling the beds with over 10 yards of compost, mulching the area surrounding the beds, and planting them up with young vegetabl