West Coast Seeds Community Spotlight The GardenWorks Project began in 2012 after the founder, Tina Korall, borrowed a book from the library called Reclaiming Our Food, by Tanya Denckla Cobb. This drove Tina to learn more about food accessibility in her community and quickly realized she could not ignore the statistics on how many families struggle with food accessibility. She felt compelled to utilize her experience in landscape design to create a solution: to grow more food for her community. With the belief that everyone deserves access to fresh, organic produce, the mission of GardenWorks began.
Tina approached her local food pantry with the idea to install 4’x8’ raised vegetable gardens at the homes of families who would be interested in growing their own food. By the end of 2012, her team had built four gardens, emptied eighty bags of soil and compost, planted thirty vegetable seedlings, and taught seven adults and seventeen children how to grow their own food. In 2013, with the help of dedicated volunteers, they refreshed those four gardens with new compost and seedlings, and gave ten more gardens to people who wanted to grow their own food at home. In 2014, they partnered with 5 social service organizations and built 20 more gardens.
Fast forward to 2025, with the help of dedicated volunteers and donors, GardenWorks has grown to partner with 17 different agencies, schools and organizations in Dupage County to provide over 150 raised garden beds within our communities. Each year, GardenWorks refreshes all existing sites while identifying two communities with many food barriers to install new vegetable gardens in ways that are convenient for them. Families are able to choose from a variety of gardens we offer such as a salsa garden, everything green garden, an herb garden, or a kid friendly garden which includes carrots, radishes and melons. Most of these families are partnered with a volunteer lead to support them throughout the season. One main objective of ours is learning to grow vegetables from around the world, such as bitter melons, pac choi and Japanese eggplants, to name a few. This year we were able to marvel at the rare arrival of corn smut in some of our gardens, also called huitlacoche which is a Mexican delicacy. We were happy to share with our local food pantries who happened to be familiar with this particular fungi, some were thrilled to see it.
Our biggest projects this year involved replacing old, worn out cedar raised beds with metal beds in the hopes for a longer lifespan. We’ve also been testing out arches to help us grow more vertically. Each garden is not only an opportunity to grow food, but also learning experiences and lasting connections. GardenWorks has built a network of food growers and food rescuers who anticipate delivering 4,000 pounds of fresh produce directly to families and local hunger relief agencies by the end of the growing season. We are able to easily log our produce donations with the partnership of a free app called Fresh Food Connect, another nonprofit that encourages food growers to share their bounty by locating their nearest hunger relief organization.
GardenWorks is here to teach anyone who is interested in growing their own food how to make it possible and encourage everyone to grow a little extra for their communities. Gardening and the simple act of spending time in nature while gaining new experiences brings out the kid in adults and allows the imagination of any child that enters the garden a chance to explore while also learning valuable life skills that happen to also be caring for the environment. The gardens are swarming and buzzing with more than just bees and butterflies, but also ideas, memories, lessons and stories for people to carry with them throughout their lives. Without the assistance of generous seed companies such as West Coast Seeds, this magical food movement would not be possible.
GardenWorks would like to massively thank West Coast Seeds for providing us the opportunity to grow beautiful, nutritious produce for our neighbors and make a difference, one seed at a time. To learn more about our movement, please visit us on Instagram, Facebook, or our website at www.gardenworksproject.org.