On a sunny Friday afternoon in Newhallville, Farmer D and Nadine Horton knelt in the dirt beside elderberry and blueberry plants, embodying a quiet defiance that speaks volumes about the resilience of New Haven's gardening community. Their work at Big Starr Garden—a sprawling triple lot with 60 raised beds stretching the width of at least three house facades—represents far more than just a response to Gather New Haven's recent collapse. It reveals a deeper truth: for years, the city's gardeners have been sustaining themselves through ingenuity, community partnerships, and sheer determination, with or without institutional support.
Six years after its founding from a merger of New Haven Farms and the New Haven Land Trust, Gather New Haven faced mounting financial difficulties that forced an uncomfortable reckoning. The nonprofit handed over 19 of its community gardens and micro-farms to city government, retaining only three gardens on properties it owns outright and its Schooner sailing camp. For many, this would feel like abandonment. For gardeners like Farmer D and Horton, it felt inevitable—and manageable.
"I anticipate systems failing, and Gather is not the biggest," Farmer D said plainly. "We saw this coming a while ago." He and Horton manage Big Starr Garden on Starr Street in Newhallville and the Goffe Street Armory Garden on County Street in the Beaver Hills neighborhood, among other sites. They've cultivated a philosophy of deliberate independence: the city can provide land access and water—the irreducible necessities—along with technical support when asked. Everything else—seeds, soil, fertilizers, wood chips, boards for raised beds, even the vision itself—gardeners have been securing on their own for years.
Over just three years managing Big Starr, Farmer D has brought in roughly $20,000 in direct funding and in-kind contributions through his extensive network and Instagram following at atroot.life. His supporters and the community itself have become the true backbone of the garden's growth. At the Armory garden, Horton has woven together an unlikely coalition: Yale medical students writing grants about the relationship between gardening and mental health, whose proceeds pay for tools and greenhouses that Gather's depleted budget could no longer cover. A running club uses the garden as home base. A horticulturist organized plant sales to benefit the common good. Blake Eason, an accomplished painter associated with NXTHVN, sold a series of paintings featuring the Armory garden, with proceeds going directly back into the garden.
This is how New Haven's gardens have truly thrived—not through nonprofit infrastructure, but through the layered relationships and creativity that bloom when a community claims ownership of its own green space. When Horton was asked whether the city might view Big Starr as an opportunity for affordable housing, she didn't dismiss the concern. Instead, she named what gardens actually do: they address the physical, economic, and spiritual health of neighborhoods. "We're always building bridges," she said, "from one community to another."
As city officials contemplate next steps, Farmer D and Horton offer a clear vision: trust the gardeners. They've earned it through years of work that the institutions never fully supported anyway. The dirt under their fingernails tells a story of self-sufficiency the city would be wise to protect.