The History
The 7-acre site of the Westbury Community Garden, located at Dunlap at Fonmeadow in the Westbury SuperNeighborhood, is owned by the City of Houston and leased to the Brays Oaks Management district and managed by the Westbury Community Garden, a project of the 501(c)3 Westbury Area Improvement Corporation.
In 2009, a group of volunteers seeking to build a community garden in the Westbury area discovered this 7-acre site within the Westbury SuperNeighborhood boundaries. We originally leased 2 acres in 2009 and then leased the full seven acres in 2011.
Thanks to Keep Houston Beautiful, Keep America Beautiful, and Scotts Miracle-Gro, our first garden beds were constructed in March of 2010. Today there are 62 raised beds, a 30 foot by 30 foot outdoor learning pavilion, orchards, compost areas, a rainwater collection system, and a certified butterfly garden with native plants. Leadership Houston Class XXVIII built the beautiful June Holly Educational Pavilion (outdoor learning pavilion) and hundreds of children and adults have attended classes under its roof. Our garden also features public art. Artistic garden signs were created by volunteers trained by MOCAH (Museum of Cultural Arts – Houston) in 2010. In November 2013, the Art Club students from Westbury High School painted large murals on our garden storage sheds. A large cabbage sculpture was donated by the artist Bill Davenport after its exhibition with True North2020.
The Westbury Community Garden is an allotment garden affiliated with Urban Harvest. Two Urban Harvest classes, “Planting the Fall Vegetable Garden” and “Constructing the Home Fruit Vegetable Garden” are commonly taught at the Westbury Community Garden under the pavilion. In 2014, two farmers who graduated from the Plant It Forward Farms program broke ground on two acres on the Westbury Community Garden property. (Plant It Forward Farms teaches refugees how to farm in the Houston climate and how to take their produce to market.). They also offer a Farm Share CSA program.
The Westbury Community Garden is one of the largest, most successful community gardens in Houston. The garden has won both local and national awards. As our mission: “The Westbury Community Garden educates adults and children about good nutrition and ecology, strengthens community spirit, provides organically-grown food, and serves as a gathering place for the community.” The garden’s slogan is “Growing Community through Gardening” and that is what it does. We have successfully created a space where residents of area single-family homes garden together with residents from nearby multi-family housing.
Our gardeners are as diverse as the produce they grow and they come from all over southwest Houston. People from different backgrounds, cultures, and circumstances come together as gardeners.
