About Us

Roots and Rays is a volunteer-run urban garden dedicated to growing organic food for the neighborhood, growing knowledge through experience, and growing community by providing a safe shared green-space. Thanks to a lot of hard work and generosity we've transformed a once vacant, dirty, and dangerous city lot into a healthy, green gathering space for the entire community.

Last year we donated nearly 100 pounds of produce to the food bank at Pilsen Wellness Center and with a nearly doubled growing space this year we hope to donate nearly 200 pounds! Through our partnerships with local schools and youth programs we have hosted dozens of workshops for gardening, art, and peaceful conflict resolution. With the addition of some new teachers and educational grants this year these programs will be expanding.

The success of Roots and Rays is dependent not only on thousands of volunteer hours but also thousands of dollars. With your donation of materials our humble urban farm will continue to flourish!

HISTORY:
Roots and Rays is a volunteer-run communal garden in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. Upon moving to Pilsen in 2007, our founding member noticed an abandoned grassy lot on Chicago’s near Southwest side, the following summer she began gardening. Starting with a perennial flower garden and a few containers of vegetables in 2008, interest in the garden quickly began to grow. In winter of 2009 based on a shared passion of urban agriculture and a desire to improve green culture in Pilsen a support network of fifteen neighbors who provided physical and financial help. Together we built eight raised beds from mostly found or salvaged materials and grew enough vegetables to feed our friends and ourselves for the entire season. Though full of delicious veggies we were still left unsatisfied knowing that our bounty wasn't reaching further into the community.

We set (and reached!) goals for the 2010 season to create a fully functional, fully supplied small scale agriculture site, to grow enough food to supply the Pilsen Wellness Center’s food pantry with fresh produce for their clients, and to share our knowledge of growing, harvesting, and cooking fresh food with those in the community through on site learning, workshops, and labor exchange.