Current Projects
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.
Growing Roots community members regularly share food with our neighborhoods! In addition to an “open garden” policy, where individuals can harvest food from the Community Garden as needed (just let us know if you need a lesson on how to harvest produce!), we are glad to celebrate the abundance through regular food distributions, potlucks, group campfires, and more.
Growing Roots is committed to the principles of justice and equity, and is in partnership with experienced facilitators to help craft and lead workshops and programming focused around topics such as community equity and horizontal service, land use narratives, and community care in volunteer settings. In addition to providing these opportunities to members of the Growing Roots community at regular trainings, we also arrange workshops for organizations, clubs, or groups looking to engage in these discussions. Contact us at stephanie@growingrootstn.org to discuss which workshop and approach might be the right fit for the individuals in your group. To honor the work and experience that facilitators bring, external organizations will be charged facilitation fees.
Growing Roots seeks to increase community engagement and accessibility when it comes to food utility. The Roots After Hours project has run every summer and fall harvesting season since the summer of 2021 and is one of the ways in which Growing Roots educates the surrounding community on the uses, processing, and various applications of homegrown herbs. This project is one of several programs run by Growing Roots that encourage independent value-added creation.
In the fall of 2024, Roots After Hours will continue on Wednesday evenings.
Fresh Mess Market @ Harton Park, Monteagle (center of town, down Main Street)
Every Thursday from June 5th - October 2nd, 2025, 3pm - 6pm
Join us after work & after school to hang out in the playground, and to buy / sell / barter fresh produce, crafts, clothing, jams, candles, boutique goods, flowers, and other creative things 🍞🌱🍅👚🌻🖼️
Visit the market page at freshmessmarket.com for more info!
Growing Roots connects with area schools and youth programs to offer STEAM-based garden learning to youth in grades K-8 for subjects like plant biology, earth sciences, place-based history, engineering, art, creative writing, and the culinary arts. Guided by Growing Roots volunteers, youth programming allows kids to connect the wonders of being in a garden with important learning concepts. Interested teachers can reach out to the Growing Roots to schedule time in your classroom / club, or groups can field trip to visit one of the Growing Roots gardens in Grundy County, TN.
Want to collaborate on something??
Backyard Basics is a culinary event where Growing Roots leads a lunchtime cook-along with community partner Grundy County UT-Extension to talk culinary techniques, recipes, and cultural connections. Residents and fellow laborers are welcome to join for free food & fun giveaways.
Growing Roots was formed out of an in-house program (called “Healthy Roots”) at DuBose Conference Center. In the two years that we called this place home, we assisted in the development and expansion of the DuBose Garden. This served as the site of many of our hands-on workshops and acted as a powerful hub for conversations concerning food sovereignty and the importance of organic gardening on the South Cumberland Plateau.
Available at our headquarters is our free community seed bank. Seeds for this project were donated by Seed Savers Exchange and local community members. We believe this piece of infrastructure represents an important first step in increasing the accessibility of organic gardening practices on the Plateau. Stop by our office to take (or give!) free heirloom seeds to support your home garden.
In the summer of 2020, Growing Roots, under the moniker “Healthy Roots”, hosted a three-day, in-person retreat focused on whole health wellness practices at DuBose Conference Center. Despite the complications posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this retreat was a resounding success. Featuring hands-on workshops underscoring whole health wellness techniques such as healthy eating on a budget, simple organic gardening practices, culinary instruction, and exercise such as hiking and yoga, “A Bounty of Good Health”, represented a powerful outreach opportunity for residents of Franklin, Grundy, and Marion counties. We look forward to hosting more of these invigorating and immersive workshops as we continue to grow, and hope to see you there!
In 2020 our team, under the “Healthy Roots” banner, joined up with the South Cumberland Summer Meal Program (SMP), a collaborative partnership between the University of the South, South Cumberland Community Fund, and the project’s community partners. SMP served meals to over 2000 local families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. We served as a connection hub for service members that were operating different meal sites in Grundy County, and offered temporary food storage space as needed.
Growing Roots resources the “teaching gardens”, located behind the South Cumberland Learning and Development Center. This space is an essential tool in providing garden-based STEAM education to youth participants in the After School Initiative.
