Neighborhood Planting Project: Kickstarting Regional Planting Days for Community Food Systems in Southern Indiana

The Neighborhood Planting Project (NPP) facilitated massive ‘planting days' with organizational partners to step meaningfully into regional distribution. Planting days were generally several things: educational events, sites of distribution of fruit trees for self-planting, opportunities to draw participants to ecological social centers such as community-focused farms and community gardens, and volunteer mass plantings of fruit trees in neighborhoods. The NPP built upon existing connections with identified local groups to execute a series of public, educational mass tree planting events based in Monroe, Orange, Vanderburgh, Marion, Greene, and Brown counties—with peripheral impact in surrounding counties. Students were also part of this experience with community engagement and service learning.