Long believed to be a private lot, the Marvin Gaye Greening Center sat empty and abandoned for years. Where others saw an overgrown field, Washington Parks & People saw opportunity. After discovering that the lot was in fact public property and part of the Marvin Gaye Park corridor, we were able to, along with a wide range of community partners, to reclaim this long-forgotten plot of earth and transform it into the vibrant cultural, nutritional, economic, and educational hub that it is today. In addition to serving as a base of community stewardship and programming of Marvin Gaye Park, DC’s longest municipal park, the one-acre site provides introductory green job and enterprise training through Parks & People’s Green Corps program, cultural and educational programming through our ParkArts program, park-based health through our Heart & Soul program, and year-round food through our Community Harvest program.
In 2019, Parks & People and community partners held a wide-range of free community events including the 3rd annual Easter Egg Hunt, Art All NIght, Back 2 School Day where we gave out free backpacks and school supplies to Ward 7 youth, and the 3rd annual Pumpkin Patch that even featured horseback rides for families! The Marvin Gaye Greening Center is equipped with a stage for performances, expenditary learning garden beds, grills for fresh produce cooking demos, a new outdoor farm kitchen coming soon, and even has an on-site office space. To partner with WPP in hosting a free community event, email [email protected] for more information.
Parks & People commits itself to a vision of a park whose beauty is equaled by its food production value. By placing urban agriculture in the midst of our public land, we are demonstrating that our parks and greens can be both sources of inspiration and nutrition. In just a few years, Parks & People, our partners, and thousands of volunteers have come a long way in advancing this vision of park-based urban agriculture. Food grown at the Marvin Gaye Greening Center is given out to local Ward 7 and 8 families at no cost and used in healthy cooking demonstration at our Riverside Healthy Living Center around the corner.
At the Riverside Healthy Living Center, Parks & People is developing DC’s first comprehensive Healthy Food Hub. A model of full-circle food production, preparation, distribution and consumption is enabled through the incubation of seedlings at Riverside as well as the use of Riverside’s newly renovated commercial kitchen, café and community hall as a site for a farmer’s market, healthy cooking classes, catering and other food-based enterprise.
We invite you to come see the impact we’ve already made, and take part in the work that remains to be accomplished! If you are interested in volunteering at the Marvin Gaye Greening Center, call us at 202-462-7275 or visit here to sign up. To partner on a community program, please email us at [email protected].
Check out photos below of past events and volunteers at the Marvin Gaye Greening Center!
Located at 5000 Nannie Helen Burroughs Ave NE in Ward 7.