R Roots Garden
R Roots Garden is composed of generational urban farmers. The group’s farming experience comes from the Boston Housing Projects of Dorchester, Mass., and Chicago. The farm’s operators learned how to grow vegetable plants in urban spaces when they were young and through that inspiration, the growers started growing at large in 2019. This has allowed the urban farmers to stay connected through the soil to those seasonal traditions, skills of a sustainable trade, and hope from their ancestors and grandparents. Since 2019, organizers of R Roots Garden have done their best to share knowledge of agriculture, provide access to locally grown food and to use the garden as a place to keep space for healing and arts.
R Root Garden’s current urban farm operation grows food for local markets, community education and seed saving, along with other sustainable initiatives including a soon-to-come garden resource and knowledge center.
The Hennepin County urban farm uses a lot of family members who are led by Queen Frye and Michael Kuykindall. Participants include Mike's mother, Felicia Kuykindall; Queen's father, Donald Frye; Queen's aunts, Michelle Livingston, Nicole Fernandez and Cynthia Fernandez; Queen's children, Jamaya and Jamichael Ollie; Queen's sisters, Monique Frye and Marianna Grayer; Queen's cousins, Selah Michele, Leon James, Justice and Malcolmn Randolph, Lanae Gant, Salena Martin, Jhenelle Martin; and Queen’s nieces and nephews, Sydney and Elijah Oundo, Victoria and Natalia Rogers and Larry Clark.
Since 2019, R Roots Garden participants have taken part in a host of community events including the Food Justice Summit, Young Farmers Convergence, the Black Seeds event, V-Fest, Vegfest, the Urban Ag Conference, and the garden has been a host site for the City of Minneapolis’ Step Up Program. R Roots Gardens supported StoreHouse Grocers with fresh produce for two seasons and participated in the Health and Liberation Summit in Philadelphia with master healer Ya'Khai Awakening.
R Roots Garden has had support from a variety of organizations and people including Life Juices, Appetite for Change, StoreHouse Grocers, UROC, Shannon Foreman, MFCC, Ujamaa Farms, Tangle Town Garden and Farm, University of Minnesota Extension, Master Gardeners, the Land Stewardship Project, the University of St. Thomas Community Entrepreneurship, Building Blocks, Penn @TheCommons, Northside Boxing Gym, Folwell Neighborhood Association, UFGA, Frogtown Farms, Sahan Journal, Support+ Feed, HEAL Minneapolis, and many more.