On a morning in late June, a group of kids carried tomato plants down 33rd Street in northwest Indianapolis, dripping dirt and water along the way. The sun shone through the trailing leaves, turning them golden green.
The kids reached a plot of land where a white sign said, “Mother Loves Garden,” and plopped the plants down. More than a dozen other kids chatted and grabbed soil to fill flower pots. When their parents picked them up at Bertha Ross Park in the afternoon, each young gardener took a tomato plant home.
They’d been working since 7:30 in the morning. They were part of Mother Loves Garden’s summer camp, started by Tysha Ahmad nearly a decade ago to teach kids in her neighborhood how to grow their own food.
The camp ran from June 1 to July 3, and campers older than 12 will keep helping at the garden until November. Ahmad’s after-school program, Creations in the Garden, kicks off July 27.
Each summer camper gets paid $50 per week to attend. Every year they return, they earn $25 more per week, until they earn $125. If you ask what they want to spend the money on, most of the campers had a very responsible answer: “I’m going to save it.”
Ayla Noel, a 9 year old, said she already took a trip to the mall to buy lip plumper, gummy worms and Pocky, a Japanese treat that’s made of biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate. Noel plans to save the rest, though.
J’Nae Walker, 9, said she would take the money home to buy food for her family.
Feeding families is why Ahmad started the camp in her neighborhood. The area is a food desert, which means it’s hard for families to access and afford groceries.
“If they can grow food, then they can feed their families,” Ahmad said. “Then when the kids go home they can have conversations with their parents about growing food, healthy food options.”
Ahmad’s family has lived a few blocks away, on 31st Street, since the 1930s. She got her green thumb as a kid, when her family moved to a farm in Georgia for four years.
After working in insurance, she quit her day job in 2015. Ahmad started the growing space in 2017 and got the nonprofit status for Mother Loves Garden in 2019.
Back then, the urban garden was half the size and only two kids showed up to camp. Jasmine Martin was one of them.
“It was just me and my brother a lot, and then it started being a couple more kids,” she said. “The camp has definitely upgraded for the best.”
Martin is 19 now, and she’s on summer break from Indiana State University, where she’s on a pre-medicine track and hopes to go into neurology. This year, she was back at the camp she grew up at, working as a counselor.
“Now, it’s watching and overseeing them do the stuff I did,” she said. “It’s kind of like the growing up experience.”
Martin has advice for any new kids who want to apply to take part in the camp: “Definitely bring some tennis shoes. And be ready to get your hands dirty and have fun.”
Over the summer, the campers said they learned how to plant food, how poop can turn into compost and how bees communicate. They built their own garden beds that they will tend throughout the season.
The kids took home their tomato plants, along with the knowledge of how a healthy meal gets to your plate in the first place.
“Our goal is basically to pour into our youth as much as possible. ‘Cause then one day, they will be our future leaders,” Ahmad said. “And somebody gonna need to know how to grow some food. Because I don’t know what the future holds, but I think we’re still gonna be eating.”
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Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young covers services and resources. Contact her at sophie.young@mirrorindy.org.
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