Community garden cultivates local leaders in southwest Detroit

Detroit — Cadillac Urban Gardens has been a godsend to southwest Detroit since opening in 2012.

In the past decade, it has provided produce for residents, attracted 60,000 hours of volunteer work and repurposed 331 shipping containers as raised beds for fruits and vegetables.

The urban garden also has helped local youths to become community leaders.

Youths like Yahir Hernandez, who was 15 and looking for a summer job when he was hired by the gardens in 2018. After planting and harvesting plants, he returned the next summer as a field supervisor.

He engaged with people by managing volunteers and giving garden tours. He also led a team performing air quality research.

Hernandez, now 19, is a sophomore at Michigan State University, where he studies biosystems engineering.

“They focus on helping the world in the environmental aspect while helping community members at the same time,” he said. “There’s definitely a lot more than just plants here.”

The garden was the brainchild of Sarah Clark, who is director of land and water programs at Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision.

Clark, who has a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Michigan, thought the former grounds of the Cadillac Clark Street plant’s executive parking lot could turn into something better.

"We call it a living laboratory,” she said. “We’re not just growing fruits and vegetables, but are growing community leaders.”

Another local-youth-turned-leader is Dolores Perales.

In 2013, she was a sophomore at Detroit Cristo Rey High School trying to fulfill the student service required for graduation when she happened upon the community garden.

She later became the environment and community sustainability specialist. Continuing on to college, she received dual master’s degrees in environment and sustainability, and urban and regional planning from UM.

"The garden made me realize I was so much more than a person within my community,” she said. “It made me realize that I could make a direct impact on people.”

She still remains involved with the urban garden as a volunteer.

Perales, a southwest Detroit native, also secured plants for the garden from the UM Campus Farm, which now supplies all plants at no cost.

She also led a project in which interns took rubber tires dumped in the area, painted them and hung them with old hoses around the fence line of the garden.

Raquel Garcia, executive director of Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, said the long-standing relationship between UM and her organization has helped to support the garden through grants, plants from the Campus Farm and technical support.

"All of those projects include participation from residents and youth,” she said. “So they're all led by residents. They design it, they tell us what they want.”