Nancy Edmonds Hanson
hansonnanc@gmail.com

It started with the seed on an idea – promoting healthy homegrown food as a neighborly gesture. Now, in their fourth growing season, Little Free Gardens have not only taken root in Moorhead and Fargo. They’re branching out.
“Most of the gardens are in the F-M area,” co-founder Megan Myrdal reports. But they’ve branched out beyond the community. Openhearted gardeners have learned about the local project through its website, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as well as the national reach of an admiring story by Minnesota Public Radio.
Modeled on the Little Free Libraries that have popped up all over the nation, Little Free Gardens bring the same generosity to homegrown good eating. The raised-bed gardens, usually positioned in front yards at table height, present the opportunity to pick fresh vegetables to anyone who wants them. Tended by the homeowner, they’re usually planted with a variety of easily harvested foods that produce continually throughout the season, including cherry tomatoes, snap peas, herbs, peppers and even strawberries.
The kickoff was on Earth Day 2016, when 100 people showed up on the Concordia campus to build and decorate the initial garden boxes. About 70 yards hosted gardens that first summer. Since then, the idea has quietly thrived here … and spread through the region and beyond.
This year, more than 270 gardens have been registered on the project website, littlefreegarden.com. A few are group projects. Several Grand Forks churches tend ten gardens in high-traffic spots where hungry people are likely to find them. A Moorhead business, RiverZen, maintains another near downtown. Westside Elementary School nurtures one, as do the Leech Lake Boys and Girls Clubs. Others are growing from Minneapolis, Chicago and Iowa City to Washington, D.C.; Burlington, Vermont; Lutherville, Maryland; Pasadena and San Diego, California; Ovieta Florida; Ocean Springs, Mississippi; Seattle, St. Louis and sundry points in between for a total of 19 states and several Canadian provinces plus Lisbon, Portugal.
Those, of course, are only the gardens that have formally signed onto the project. To do so, the hosting gardener completes a registration kit (available online at fargostuff.com). Megan adds that residents located in the city of Moorhead can still take advantage of this summer’s special deal: After registering, they’ll receive gift certificates to Menard’s, Ace Hardware and Holland’s to buy the building supplies and plants they need, thanks to a local donor.
Those thriving Little Free Gardens are only one of three initiatives the all-volunteer, unfunded organization has charted. Its beginnings date back just a little farther than the gardens themselves, when founders Megan, Gia Rassier and Jeff Knight were inspired, not by blue-ribbon gardening, but by its long-rejected cousin – ugly food.
“This all started with concern over food waste,” Megan reports. In 2015, the three were brainstorming ways to address the staggering amount of good, edible food that goes to waste in the United States, estimated to be about 40 percent of the total. The groceries can hit the garbage anywhere from the field to the supermarket, but the lion’s share is tossed away in right in home kitchen.
“We wanted to draw attention to the value of those crooked cucumbers, the twisted carrots, the blemished tomatoes,” the registered dietitian reports. “We came up with what was supposed to be a one-time event, the Ugly Food Farmers Market, to highlight the wholesomeness of cosmetically unattractive produce.
“And the stars aligned! We discovered there was a lot of interest here in local food, and we just kept on going.” Their group, Ugly Food of the North, has hosted 53 unique events since then, from pot lucks and movie screenings to public conversations about growing, preparing and eating healthy food. Their Terra Madre festival celebrating all things nutritious and local drew hundreds to Bluestem in 2017. Those events inspired not only the Little Free Gardens but other initiatives, including “ugly food” sections at Prairie Roots Coop and in Bismarck.
Megan and Gia planted a third branch of programming in January 2018. Megan describes it as based on the One Million Cups gatherings in Fargo, which focus on business entrepreneurship. “We call ours ‘First Fridays at B’ and concentrate on the food space” she says of the monthly gatherings of foodies that now draw 70 to 80 food enthusiasts to Theatre B in Moorhead. Topics spotlight all facets of the local foods movement with panels of chefs, small farmers, gardeners, health professionals and others. The last program in June focused on pollinators. The next free 7:30 meeting is scheduled for the morning of Sept. 6.
Somewhere along the way, as their outreach grew, the name “Ugly Food of the North” became too hard to explain. “It doesn’t fit in an elevator speech,” she jokes. She and Gia have amended it to simply “Food of the North.” News on upcoming events and projects can be found online at foodofthenorth.com, where visitors view its mission: “At Food of the North, we believe food can change the world. Our mission is to celebrate, connect and empower our local food community in Fargo-Moorhead and beyond.”
The project’s horizons may be unlimited, but growth is restricted by the time that Megan and Gia, both employed full-time, can devote to it. Gia is assistant office manager at Dental Care Fargo, while Megan is marketing and communication director for Northarvest Bean Growers Association. Nevertheless, the two continue to cultivate an expanding menu of ways to nourish the local foods movement in Fargo-Moorhead.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Little Free Gardens are soaking up the sun and rain in front yards all over Moorhead, Fargo and West Fargo – just waiting for their crops to ripen and invite all comers to have a healthy, homegrown snack. But there’s one small problem, Megan acknowledges: “People here can sometimes be too polite to just walk up and take something, even when it says ‘Little Free Garden.’” That’s why their website encourages gardeners to print out and post a sign on their patches of public produce: “As this produce ripens, please help yourself.” Really, you may.