Local First Arizona opens Heart and Soil People’s Garden

Local First Arizona just opened a Garden Education Center at Heart and Soil People’s Garden. This comes thanks to a $1 million investment from The Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation.

Heart and Soil People’s Garden began in 2022 as a donated vacant lot in the heart of South Phoenix, a neighborhood long defined by limited access to fresh, affordable food. 

Founders transformed that empty corner into a women-led urban farm that could nourish both bodies and community. Today, Heart and Soil is cultivated by 12 active women growers and produces more than 14,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables annually.

Kimber Lanning from Local First Arizona joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss more.

“The Heart and Soil Garden is a community garden,” Lanning said, “…what we did is we just acquired a new residential lot that, through the last 50 years, was used as a parking lot, and we cleared it away and expanded the garden.”

The Heart and Soil Garden is dedicated to providing an opportunity for beginning farmers to have plots of land where they can learn to grow food. Organically planting in season to feed themselves, their families, or their communities. Lanning also emphasized how the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation impacted their effort.

“They’ve invested in our entrepreneurial programs for a really long time,” Lanning discussed, “They’ve been great partners to us…they helped us acquire the land next door so we could expand and actually begin to incubate beginning farmers.”

Lanning explained how this is an opportunity for individuals in the community to go and begin growing their own food.

“They’re very engaged, and there’s a wide variety of people,” Lanning said, “…it’s a great time to be growing your own food with grocery bills as high as they are right now.”