Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing “Sowing Change” series about urban farming.
In 2008, Green City Growers started designing herb gardens for local restaurants and backyard gardens for residents in the Boston area. Today, the employee-owned Certified B Corp maintains more than 200 gardens across the city — including a rooftop farm at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox — bringing fresh produce and farm-based education to schools, businesses and community spaces.
With roots in real agricultural practices and a mission to transform the food system, the company continues to grow, proving that farming can flourish in the heart of a city.
The company’s urban agriculture outreach includes 6,000 pounds of produce annually at the Fenway Park garden, as well as educational gardens at public schools, a learning hydroponic garden at the Museum of Science and more to engage diverse communities through vertical farming and sensory gardens.
The garden at Fenway Park, designed and installed by Recover Green Roofs, was also featured on Farm Journal’s AgDay in 2023 (shown below).
Green City Growers CEO Christopher Grallert says he grew up working on a vegetable operation and spent a career in global fresh produce, experience that has served him well in the complexities of designing and maintaining over 200 gardens in Boston.
“We’re growing 40 or 50 different species of vegetables in raised-bed gardens and hydroponic systems for customers ranging from schools to senior living communities to corporate campuses and multifamily housing [and more],” he says. “It’s complex and has to be beautiful and impactful all the time. It requires a lot of expertise, and we take this agriculture expertise and bring it into all these distributed locations.”
With so many accomplishments, Grallert says his proudest achievement is the people who make it all happen.
“There’s great passion here among almost 40 employees. And since we’re employee owned, and a [Certified B Corp], that means we have a triple bottom-line mission that combines people, planet and profit,” he says. “I’m proud that we can execute this. We’re paying living wages for people who want to work in agriculture and providing year-round stable jobs,” Grallert says.
Green City Growers not only designs and installs the gardens but also maintains them. Grallert says the quality of the food production infrastructure is something that sets the company apart from others.
“The infrastructure is built to be highly productive and built to grow vegetables,” he says. “So, we have the domain expertise, with decades of fresh produce industry expertise, and we’re able to build these incredibly productive gardens, beautiful gardens that provide fresh produce that’s commensurate with what comes out of the supermarket.”
Education is another key aspect of Green City Growers. By providing agricultural literacy, the company can dispel myths about agriculture and the food system, Grallert says.
“I believe, even in this divided world, if you asked anybody if they wanted to see more local food production, most people would raise their hands, so that’s a predominating commonality,” he says. “It’s a great thing to bring people together right in these spaces and teach them the facts around the food system. We’re able to provide real agricultural literacy to the people that are participating in the garden program.”
Grallert emphasizes the beauty and aesthetics of the gardens the company grows, as anyone who has planted a vegetable into the dirt knows that growing and beauty don’t always go hand in hand.
To make the gardens aesthetically pleasing as well as functional, he says, the company uses commercial organic vegetable operations: weeding at the thread stage before they’re established, using organic crop protection materials for fungicides and insects, and providing plant training and cultivation. In addition, 25 urban farmers maintain the gardens.
“These are all master gardeners on staff to keep the gardens beautiful,” Grallert says. “Just like a regular vegetable farm, we’re generally there weekly. Some of the larger in-ground infrastructures we do for corporate clients, we’re there multiple times per week to ensure that those things are happening. We’re essentially mimicking what goes on in top-quality commercial production.”
At Fenway Park, for example, about 80% of the food grown goes into the foodservice concessions, Grallert says. Some food is also donated to local food-impact organizations.
“Fenway Park is [invested in] sustainability and promoting local food systems, so they’re a big supporter,” he says.
“Boston Public Schools is great as well. These school gardens are used to bring kids from pre-K all the way through high school students to work in these garden spaces and learn about organic gardening,” Grallert adds. “We also partner with a company called Fork Farms to do indoor, hydroponic, vertical growing. These gardens are super productive. These are very low-tech gardens, sort of analog systems, so the kids can get involved there, and in many cases, the food is going home with participants in the garden or into the cafeterias where they can be used in the food system.”
Corporations are another key client for Green City Growers.
“Corporations that are looking for ways to check off certain sustainability boxes … may have a living wall made from Grobrix, or we may do a hydroponic unit, a Babylon Micro-Farm, internally,” Grallert says. “And we can do all kinds of events around these things. We bring people on a regular basis to help harvest, to do a salad party, do a smoothie party or something like that [for engagement]. Constituents can also take the fresh produce home.”
Senior living communities are another popular garden location. Grallert says residents can get involved in active living through sensory gardens “where aroma and color and texture and taste can be stimulating to people living with certain conditions.”
The success of any food system, he says, relies on multiple partners along the value chain from the seed to the grower to the packer to the distributor to the retailer to the consumer.
“It’s the same in a local food system. I think the challenge that we face the most is developing technology that can be used in a local food system, that’s going to bring those economic thresholds closer, and at the same time, we can never take away the components of Mother Nature,” Grallert says. “No technology is ever going to take away the requirement of a technician or a farmer, which is the second thing we need to capacity build.”
In 2021, employee-owned grower-shipper Tanimura & Antle announced its investment as the majority shareholder and new partner of Green City Growers. The merger of the two companies is based on a common commitment and passion to provide communities, organizations and individuals with a hands-on educational experience to increase awareness, build engagement and provide education about where food comes from, the company said in a news release.
By providing a path to engagement with hands-on experience, Green City Growers will assist Tanimura & Antle with reaching individuals of all ages, promoting a long-term healthy lifestyle with consumers. The combined goal of this partnership is to access and serve individuals and local communities not ordinarily provided with the opportunity to connect with their food while strengthening the food supply by providing a supplemental, healthy and independent food source, the release said.
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