Bread for the City’s rooftop garden projects!

Bread for the City is bringing our healthy community to the next level: the roof!

We are building vegetable gardens on the roofs of each of our two centers. These  gardens will grow lots of fresh, healthy food for use in our pantries and cooking workshops — and, more importantly, they will be spaces that foster reflection, learning, and dialog about health and food justice, across lines of class, race, and age.

We need your help to make this vision a reality! Become a member of Bread for the City’s Community Supported Agriculture project by making a gift to our rooftop garden projects today.

See more pictures here, videos here, and join the conversation on Facebook!

On our Northwest Center, located at 1525 7th Street NW, we have converted our extensive green roof into the first large-scale roof top agriculture project in the DC region. DC Greenworks, DC’s preeminent green roof organization, is providing us the technical support and know-how for this project, helping us build the now intensive green roof that will feature near 30 raised beds that will grow a variety of vegetables and herbs.

Our Southeast Center features an eclectic array of containers to grow herbs and vegetables specially selected by our clientele. The garden features rain barrels provided by DDOE and will utilize innovative irrigation systems developed by Gifts of Good Earth.

The food from these gardens will not only go to our food pantry, but will also be taken home by client volunteers and participants in events with our Nutrition Consultant.

Get Involved!

We need your help to make these projects happen!  Most of the construction has been completed, but we still need volunteers to lead workshops, plan events in the space, and to donate goods like organic potting soil, hanging pots for growing herbs on our walls, large, free-standing pots for berry bushes and tomatoes, vegetable seeds or flowers (for our bees!).

DC Greenworks estimates that the garden will cost $50,000 (and 200 hours) to build, and $15,000 a year to maintain. That’s a significant cost, but we believe that our community deserves spaces such as these — so we’re asking you to help us make it possible. Become a member of Bread for the City’s Community Supported Agriculture project! Donate to the green roof project today.

For more information, please send an email to Anna Tahtamouni or call her at 202-386-7006.