Taking root Behind the scenes at Buffalo’s new gardening co-op By Ron Ehmke UR board members Brian Dold, Kristen Smith, and Claire Schneider standing in front of the future location of Urban Roots. Photo by Jim Bush. From arts organizations to street festivals to record labels, Buffalo is a DIY town. Throughout recent decades, many an institution has come into being simply because a handful of residents sensed a gaping hole in the cultural landscape and rallied enough support to fill it. The seeds for the latest grassroots phenomenon were planted three years ago by West Side homeowner Blair Woods, who was experiencing “an aversion to having to drive a minimum of twenty miles and spend an hour round-trip in a car to get to the suburban nurseries.” That frustration was combined, Woods recalls, with “a general feeling amongst my closest friends and me that, where possible, we’d like to keep city dollars circulating in the city.” He e-mailed a few dozen like-minded people about the situation, which led to a series of meetings; eventually a fourteen-member interim board of directors was elected and the neighborhood was on its way to creating a gardening center of its own. Woods is quick to minimize his own role in the birthing of what came to be known as Urban Roots. “Nothing would have ever gotten done if it were left up to me to get this project going,” he insists. “I wanted the nursery, but I didn’t want to open it, run it, or be involved in it. Every board member has contributed immensely to getting us to where we are today.” The organizers looked to the nearby Lexington Co-op as a model. “I thought it would be easier to get 300 people to give us $100 each than to get a few people to give us $30,000 to start a business,” Woods says. For their hundred bucks, contributors will receive a lifetime membership, entitling them to store discounts, advance notice of sales and workshops, and a vote in electing board members and other big-picture policy decisions. At presstime, the all-volunteer group was in the process of hiring a manager and staff. Board treasurer Kristen Smith promises that, when the doors open at 426 Rhode Island this month, shoppers will find something special: “We will offer the convenience of being in the city, a place that you can walk to to shop for garden supplies, plants, et cetera. We will also partner with local artists [to provide] garden-related artwork. We want to foster a sense of community, something that is hard to come by at the big-box stores.” The home garden of UR board member Cynnie Gaasch. Photo by Jim Bush. One focus will be organic options for soil, fertilizer, and the like. Hard-to-find items are another priority. “We are going to have a selection of heirloom vegetables and plants, including the tomatoes we sold during last year’s plant sale,” Smith notes. Fellow board member Claire Schneider—by day a curator at the Albright-Knox— elaborates: “As the ‘tomato lady’ of the group, I only know one person to get these from locally. As a curator of the unusual, you could say, I love variety. I am totally frustrated with what one could get at local nurseries. There are so many varieties in the hundreds to thousands for each type of plant, [so] why do stores always offer the same one or two? … Now that we have a grower specializing in these varieties, the great dilemma becomes how to choose, because the choices are so fantastic.” Selection isn’t the only area where the new center will reveal its—forgive me—urban roots. “To anyone walking in the store,” board president Anthony Armstrong notes, “Urban Roots will be organized like other garden retailers, but I think customers will be surprised by our welcoming and knowledgeable staff that, in addition to general plant care and maintenance, can speak specifically to gardening on city lots, which may be relatively small or shady.” Brian Dold, a landscape architect for the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, first learned about the project a year and a half ago and was so inspired by the organizers’ dedication to the city that he joined their ranks. “I really see this as an exciting opportunity to educate people about their landscape, to add value to a West Side neighborhood that desperately needs it, and provide quality landscape products to the local community.” Anthony Armstrong shares Dold’s optimism: “Once people see the on-the-ground results of projects like Urban Roots—and many others throughout the city—they get excited. They start to think about what else we can do together. They start believing in the city and in themselves. We’re starting a garden center, but I think much more, this store is the tip of an iceberg of all of the good happening throughout the neighborhood. From the overwhelming response we’ve gotten so far, I think our member-owners feel the same way. Urban Roots is not the end-all be-all, but it is symptomatic of a community on the rise.” Urban Roots Community Garden Center 426 Rhode Island St. 882-1923 www.urbanroots.org Ron Ehmke (rehmke@buffalospree.com) is the associate editor of this magazine. SUBSCRIBE NOW Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top