Highland Park could be home to an extensive urban farm and outdoor classroom next spring.
It’s being called an “Agri-hood” and would be located on three vacant lots next to neighborhood staple Mama Nandi’s Knowledge Cafe. Plans for the Argri-hood include a micro orchard and berry patch, greenhouse, pollinator garden, and an outdoor kitchen with a woodfire brick oven.
Dawn Folsom is organizing a GoFundMe campaign for the project on behalf of cafe owner and community steward Mama Nandi. It has a lofty $150,000 goal including $35,000 for the outdoor classroom and $30,000 for an immersive playground.
Folsom says she’s spent the last 14 years building urban farms for underserved youth in places like Indiana, Arkansas, and Florida. She also runs A New Dawn Farm in Fort Wayne Indiana, where she is currently based. She’s originally from Florida but met Mama Nandi in 2021 when she lived in Detroit briefly.
“She helped me out at a point in my life when I was starting over,” Folsom says. “I had baby twins and we had been abandoned in Detroit. If anyone in the neighborhood needs help, it’s her.”
She adds, “It feels like Highland Park has been forgotten, like Detroit has turned its back on Highland Park, but it has such a rich history of urban farming.”
Folsom’s project in Indiana, in partnership with the Garrett Public Library, included an outdoor classroom similar to the one she wants to build at Nandi’s and a meditation pathway.
“It provided the children in the neighborhood the opportunity to take ownership in something and we ended up serving 3,000 people that first year,” she says.
Mama Nandi tells us, “I deal with the children [in the neighborhood] a lot and if the children can be out in nature, maybe it will help them learn. I’m here to teach the children to learn and better themselves.”
Mama Nandi has owned the lots next to the cafe for three years and has built a few raised beds on the land to teach local kids about growing their own food. She says she never had the funds or resources to build out the space and Folsom convinced her to start the fundraiser.
“I just do things the best I can if I have money for it,” she says. “But I’ve had this land for a long time and the block is empty so I’ve always thought about using it to do something for the children.”
She moved Nandi’s Knowledge Cafe at 71 Oakman Blvd. from its former spot on Woodward Avenue in 2017. It functions as primarily an African-centric bookstore and cafe, but is considered a community haven with weekly events like poetry nights.
During Kwanzaa, which starts on December 26, Mama Nandi hosts a nightly gathering for neighborhood children to light a candle for each of the holiday’s seven days.
Mama Nandi tells Metro Times a large part of the Agri-Hood project will be planting fruit and nut trees to give Highland Park children a chance to interact with nature.
“I want to have a nature walk and be able to do something as simple as showing them how to climb a tree,” she says. “I’m in my sixties and when I was growing up, you used to be able to go anywhere in the city and eat grapes and berries. That doesn’t exist anymore, but if you plant it will grow, just like if you build it it will grow.”
For the outdoor classroom, Mama Nandi plans to focus on teaching children aged 5-10 reading, writing, science, and math. She also wants to have retired elders in the community teach skilled trades like carpentry.
“All of my grandchildren are 11 and under and these children are just brilliant,” she says. “The things that are running through their heads… they need to be encouraged and they need hands-on activities. I feel like a lot of hands on things have been taken out of schools and they’re just on the computer. At this young age, they can grab things quickly and decide where they wanna go. I want them to be their own bosses and be able to build their own businesses.”
Folsom expects to be back in Highland Park to build the Agri-Hood from May 16-19.
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