A new food garden and farm stand will open in June at the Akron Zoo.
The project will provide work for people with developmental disabilities as well as fruits and vegetables for neighbors who have little access to fresh produce.
The garden will occupy 2 acres of zoo-owned land along Edgewood Avenue, outside the zoo’s perimeter gate, said David Barnhardt, the zoo’s director of marketing and guest services. Food grown in the garden will supply the zoo’s Komodo Kingdom Cafe and will be sold at the stand at the southwest corner of Edgewood and Copley Road.
Ground will be broken in the next two weeks, Barnhardt said.
The garden will be operated by Hattie’s Gardens, a vocational program run by Hattie Larlham, a nonprofit organization that provides services to people with developmental disabilities. The program expects to hire six to eight workers for the garden as well as one or two leaders, called job coaches, said Dottie Grexa, Hattie Larlham’s vice president of vocational and enterprise services.
Grexa said the garden will be fenced for security and will have a greenhouse-like structure called a hoop house, as well as a building that will serve as both a shelter for the workers and a facility for preparing produce for sale. A second hoop house may be added next year, she said.
In keeping with the commitment to sustainability shared by the zoo and Hattie’s Garden, the walk-up farm stand will be made from a refurbished shipping container, Grexa said.
The farm stand will be less than a half-mile from the zoo’s main entrance, Barnhardt said. Some parking will be available, he said, but the stand is also expected to get foot traffic from residents of the urban neighborhood.
Grexa said the area is considered a food desert, meaning no fresh produce is available for sale within a mile of the site.
She said the stand is expected to offer common vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, lettuce and greens, and neighbors have also asked for root vegetables, okra and corn. Some trees that need to be felled will be replaced with fruit trees that will also supply the stand, she said.
Barnhardt said signs on the zoo grounds will promote the farm stand. The zoo may eventually offer educational programming at the garden, he said.
This will be Hattie’s Gardens’ first freestanding farm stand, Grexa said. The program has gardens at Crown Point Ecology Center and Old Trail School, both in Bath, and sells produce at a few farmers markets. It also supplies produce to Hattie Larlham’s chain of Hattie’s Cafes and to the Blue Door Cafe & Bakery in Cuyahoga Falls.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/mbbreck, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckABJ and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.