Damayan is a small non-profit made up of gardeners, educators, and entrepreneurs in Tallahassee, Florida who want to enhance the quality of life in our community by teaching people how to grow their own food. We currently have three different garden programs to fulfill this goal: family gardens, edible schoolyards, and community gardens. By planting gardens and teaching others to tend them without using chemical pesticides or fertilizers, Damayan enables pragmatic change toward a sustainable future.

We go into backyards, schoolyards, and low-income housing communities and provide our gardeners with everything they need to establish a raised-bed vegetable garden. In addition to providing soil, compost, plants, seeds, stakes, trellises, and frames, we also offer hands-on instruction while the new gardeners are mastering their skills.

Our essential motivation is the belief that everyone should have access to fresh, nutritious food and the health and well-being that comes with eating locally grown, seasonal food. There is a also a sense of community and connection that grows right along with the plants when people from all walks of life come together to maintain a garden, cook, and eat together. And we can’t underestimate the transformational power of beauty—a chain link fence loses its institutional feel when it has sugar snap peas and nasturtiums twining around it. But, like the food we grow, each of our gardens has a distinct flavor, and each of our programs has slightly different goals. For more information, email us at damayan@yourvillage.com.