Gleaners Community Garden The Detroit Food Zoo
By demonstrating various ways to grow healthy foods, the Food Zoo is able to showcase how growing your own food can be an empowering tool to reducing food insecurity and hunger.
Youth learn about hunger and nutrition.
Detroit Food Zoo is a learning garden, youth learn to plant, weed, water and harvest.

The Detroit Food Zoo was developed in 2016 as a community garden with a primary goal of providing garden based nutrition education to youth and Gleaners’ partner agencies. By demonstrating various ways to grow healthy foods, the Food Zoo is able to showcase how growing your own food can be an empowering tool to reducing food insecurity and hunger. All produce harvested in the Food Zoo is made available in the free aisle for agencies and offered as educational tastings to youth volunteers.  During the 2018 season, the Detroit Food Zoo grew over 25 different crops and harvested over 1,000lbs of produce for our agency partners including items that are not as commonly available to agencies such as fresh garlic, basil and parsley; different greens such as kale, Swiss chard, and arugula; or unique varieties of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.

Support Your Local Community Gardens

“We figured out the garden is definitely an economic engine, and it’s a communal space… Our plan is to really keep figuring out how it can be a vehicle for greater social change.”

Each bottle of hot sauce purchased directly supports Detroit Food Zoo and many other gardens with vibrant social missions to strengthen the fabric of urban neighborhoods.

Buy NOW!

Christopher Bonilla, Hostos Community College

Other stories from our partners..

New Roots Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City
Small Axe Peppers partners with the International Rescue Committee to help newly settled refugees earn income through farming as they transition to their new life in America.
Brook Park Youth Farm
Mott Haven
At Brook Park Youth Farm, the garden's primary caretakers are teenagers with criminal records who were sent to work in the garden through a court order as an alternative to incarceration.
La Finca Del Sur
Mott Haven
La Finca del Sur is an urban farm in Mott Haven led by women of color, highlighting the agricultural heritage of its farmers who have roots in the American and global south.