Grounded in More Ways Than One
Photo Credit: Askia Stewart, Jr of Local First Arizona
By NaTyshca Pickett
South Phoenix's Heart & Soil People's Garden opens its Garden Education Center, a new space where growing food and building wealth go hand in hand.
At a time when grocery bills keep climbing and supply chains feel increasingly fragile, South Phoenix is getting something quietly radical: a place where neighbors can learn to grow their own food, understand their finances, and build something that lasts.
The Garden Education Center at Heart & Soil People's Garden opened as the community's newest anchor for agricultural education and economic empowerment, and it arrives with both deep roots and serious ambitions.
Programming at the center is designed to meet people where they are. On the growing side, participants can expect hands-on training in crop planning, soil health, composting, and seasonal planting. On the business side, the curriculum extends into financial literacy, loan readiness, business planning, and supply-chain coordination, acknowledging that food sovereignty and financial freedom are rarely separate conversations.
Photo Credit: Askia Stewart, Jr of Local First Arizona
The center's opening is the result of years of work made possible, in part, by a milestone investment: a $1 million-plus award from The Bob & Renee Parsons Foundation in 2024, the largest grant in Local First Arizona's history. The funding helped expand Heart & Soil's physical footprint while also supporting business accelerator programming specifically designed for Spanish-speaking and Black entrepreneurs.
Heart & Soil is an initiative of Local First Arizona. The garden launched in 2022 on a vacant lot in the heart of South Phoenix. Today, it is cultivated by 12 active women growers and produces more than 14,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables each year, a number that speaks less to scale and more to what becomes possible when a community is given the tools, the space, and the trust to tend something.
Photo Credit: Askia Stewart, Jr of Local First Arizona
The grand opening also marked the unveiling of a mural by Phoenix-based artist Sorayyah Johnson, whose work now graces the exterior of the Garden Education Center. Sunflowers, lavender, carrots, and honeybees fill the wall in bold color, a visual love letter to the land and the community it feeds. It is the kind of art that doesn't just decorate a space. It declares it.
Photo credit: Peter Jordan Photography
The Garden Education Center represents the next chapter of that story, one where the harvest includes more than produce.