Since 1995, City Sprouts has maintained community and family gardens in our half-acre demonstration plot at 40th and Franklin Streets in the Orchard Hill Neighborhood of North Omaha.

We work with inner-city residents and volunteers from around Omaha to grow vegetables, flowers, and herbs using environmentally responsible and sustainable gardening techniques. We provide a comfortable setting where people of diverse ages and backgrounds can work outside together.

Our mission is to sustain communities through gardening. We help Omaha neighborhoods, civic groups, schools, youth groups, and residents develop lasting, productive green spaces.

Our larger vision is to work with Omahans to build local food systems, improve community health, empower neighborhoods, and strengthen economic viability and sustainability.

Over the years, City Sprouts has helped establish community and family gardens at various Omaha neighborhoods, such as Gifford Park, Leavenworth, and south Omaha.

In addition to improving food quality and security, neighborhood gardens enhance community identity and pride. According to many studies, recreational gardening confers significant health benefits.

In 2005 and 2006, we completed a major "Garden Redesign" at City Sprouts to build raised beds, improve the grading of the garden, to build more accessible paths, and to plant a variety of beautiful, native trees, flowers, and shrubs. Rebecca Anderson led this project, with the help of many individual donors and organizations.

In 2009, we first began preparing the new "Decatur Street Garden" for cultivation. This is a half-acre site just 1 and 1/2 blocks from the original City Sprouts garden. We are working on it in cooperation with Orchard Hill Neighborhood Association, who owns the three city lots. Projects at this garden are oriented more toward food production capacity, in contrast to our more educationally oriented family gardens on Franklin St.

Also in 2005, we were given the generous gift of a house next to the garden at 4002 Seward St. We are renovating the house to order to be used as a place for meetings, member's offices, and a education and community center.

There are many volunteer opportunities for special projects all year around. We send out irregular e-mail notices of garden news; for current information, please contact co-director Jumoke Omojola (at csgardening@gmail.com) or co-director Jeannie Dickes (at jeaninedickes@gmail.com) about volunteer opportunities.

We are members of the American Community Gardening Association, the Omaha Council of Garden Clubs, the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum, the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society, and the Nonprofit Association of the Midlands.