Growing over the past decade, the Five Loaves Two Fish Community Garden is a vital community asset and center of health, wellness, and food justice for its West Philadelphia neighborhood.
Dr. Beverly Giles Carter and Victor Young founded Five Loaves Two Fish to improve their community’s nutrition and health, address diabetes and obesity, and provide a safe space for the community to come together. Their organization, Community Health and Gardens Inc., runs events and youth programming in partnership with a local school.
“Food justice is important in our community, and it is important that we are visible,” said Dr. Giles Carter. “We must come together to figure these things out.”
Community gardens play an essential role in addressing urban community needs such as climate resiliency, access to fresh produce, enhanced health and wellbeing, and a connection to nature. These spaces are critical to sustain vibrant, healthy, and safe urban neighborhoods.
Five Loaves Two Fish has permanent protection from development thanks in part to the work of the Neighborhood Gardens Trust (NGT), an organization dedicated to preserving and supporting community gardens and other shared spaces across Philadelphia.
Between 2018 and 2020, NGT acquired and preserved five of the garden’s six land parcels in partnership with the City of Philadelphia.
But the path to preservation for the last parcel was unclear. The property had long been abandoned by a private owner and had decades of tax liens.
“This is the most beautiful, peaceful place. If we lose this space, we lose the harmony it has brought to the neighborhood,” said Young.
Then, in 2022, NGT received a DCNR acquisition grant with flexibility to be applied to Five Loaves Two Fish. In 2023, the garden’s remaining parcel was preserved.
Along with permanent development protection, the garden has become a pollinator habitat site in partnership with John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge and Audubon Mid-Atlantic.
