Annie Boelen, YSS Rooftop Gardens farm coordinator, checks on one wall of the hydroponic gardens inside retrofitted shipping containers.
Writer: Macey Shofroth
Photographer: Duane Tinkey
The idea for a rooftop garden grew from a seed of an idea planted at Youth & Shelter Services. Its leaders were looking for a way to offer sustainable employment to their clients, who have often missed out on opportunities to succeed.
The organization provides educational and therapeutic programs for Iowa youth experiencing hardships, but leaders felt employment and workforce readiness were areas that were missing in their coverage.
“It’s so easy to just write this generation off and think, ‘Oh, they just don’t want to work.’ But honestly, they just don’t know how,” said Samanthya Marlatt, director of youth empowerment and advocacy at YSS.
And so the YSS Rooftop Gardens sprouted. Young people who use YSS’s Youth Opportunity Center, which serves local youth experiencing homelessness, can gain work experience at the garden by growing and selling produce from inside retrofitted shipping containers at 2705 East Euclid Ave. Members of each cohort are paid for up to 20 hours of work each week while also receiving classroom instruction that builds on various life and leadership skills.
The goal is to help participants learn to harvest sustainable, healthy produce for the community while they also cultivate skills for long-term success and begin to financially support themselves.
“It’s not just feeding them a fish, it’s teaching them to fish,” Marlatt said.
Local, urban farming for good
The rooftop gardens project was originally intended for the top of YSS’s Youth Opportunity Center in downtown Des Moines, hence the name. But the cost to retrofit the top of the building was too expensive, so YSS purchased vacant land on Euclid Avenue.
The gardens comprise six shipping containers that house hydroponic crops and have their own HVAC systems and water tanks. The system is called controlled environment agriculture. Each garden uses only 5 gallons of water each week, which is recycled. The hydroponic system uses LED lighting, water and nutrients rather than soil.
The plants grow vertically along movable walls to save space, and Marlatt explained they use a trickle-down crop schedule. “Each week, we harvest a wall. We transplant seedlings that are ready to move into the wall, and then we seed the next round. So there’s never a week that we’re not working on a wall or don’t have a harvest,” she said.
So far, the program has focused on growing romaine lettuce. In a six-week span, the first cohort grew 452 pounds. They harvest 100 heads of lettuce each week.
The Rooftop Gardens team recently completed a pilot project selling their lettuce at HyVee. They also sell at the Des Moines’ Downtown Farmers Market every other week. They’re joining the Iowa Food Cooperative and hope to start their own subscription service. The funds go back into the program, which Marlatt said makes the program more self-sufficient and sustainable.
Whatever produce doesn’t sell gets donated to participants, staff, YSS programs, shelters and various food pantries. “Even the scraps we donate to the turtle sanctuary in Ames, and then anything salvageable is used as compost,” Marlatt said.
Because the produce doesn’t travel long distances, it retains more of its freshness and nutritional value, Marlatt said. The team plans to diversify its crops and expand its customer base.
“It’s a really cool environment to learn about the science of how things grow. It’s also a solution for whenever we see unique weather patterns. This is a really good solution for food insecurity,” Marlatt said.
Building sustainable lives
The Rooftop Gardens also grow a sense of security in the lives of its participants.
Participants in the program are aged 18-25 and have all used YSS’s services in some way due to experiences with homelessness, addiction, incarceration or other struggles. These are young people who have experienced barriers to success; Rooftop Gardens offers them opportunities to develop skills to become self-sufficient.
“Often for the first time, they have a chance at employment that they wouldn’t normally have,” Marlatt said.
The cohorts spend each Monday in the classroom to work on different life and work skills. They complete the Dale Carnegie Leadership Training and ServSafe certification. They work on soft skills, like understanding the norms of a workplace and managing a household.
“We do a lot of soft skill building, like ‘How do we still come to work even if we fought with our coworker?’ Transportation is typically our biggest barrier that we face, so we really work with them about that; we don’t want transportation to be an issue at the next job they have,” Marlatt said. “I always say, I’ll meet you where you’re at, but I’m not going to let you stay there.”
The program aims to build a foundation so participants are able to remain gainfully employed after they finish. Participants learn to use Des Moines’ public transit and community food support. YSS partners with Iowa State Extension and Outreach to work on budgeting and meal planning. They are also currently working with Iowa Workforce Development to develop a program for job seekers who have previously received resettlement funds or support through Lutheran Services in Iowa.
The hope is to empower participants, so they don’t feel like they’re in survival mode. Marlatt wants the skills they learn through Rooftop Gardens to help them grow into adulthood and move past the struggles they’ve endured in their young lives.
“It doesn’t only give them the drive to wake up in the morning and see the literal fruits of their labor. It also helps them accomplish big things. When you’re able to feed people, I think that is almost healing in a sense. To literally see why it’s important that you show up every day and see what you’re doing actually matters,” Marlatt said. “It’s not lettuce. It’s hope and opportunity.”
