Growing Roots

Growing Roots manages a garden space in downtown residential Tracy City, offering a hands-on opportunity for our community to engage in the efforts of food access and food sovereignty. Located on land owned by the Tracy City First United Methodist Church, the Growing Roots team “broke ground” at this garden plot in Fall of 2020, planting a crop of collards and garlic to overwinter, giving us our first community harvest in Spring 2021. Individual or groups of volunteers can join us in tending & harvesting the community food plots, or they can adopt a "GYO" ("Grow Your Own") raised bed.

In collaboration with the Mountain Goat Trail Alliance, a rails-to-trails 501(c)3 connecting the communities of Monteagle, Sewanee, and Tracy City, Growing Roots is planning the Native Plant Space, a sanctuary garden for at-risk species endemic to the South Cumberland Plateau. Receiving counsel from members of the Cherokee Nation and Eastern Band of Cherokee, this location will also highlight the uses of these plants to the Indigenous people who first called the Plateau home and bring awareness to land use narratives surrounding this area. Growing Roots is committed to inhabiting our mountain in a conscious way, recognizing how we are rooted in the history of land and people.