Seed Starter Campaign
Community Supported… Sowing
SEEDS, Deepening ROOTS for a flourishing future
Cultivating marginalized future growers of food & just creative community
SEED STARTER Campaign 2025
I’m regina, steward and guardian of Diaspora Gardens - a land-arts-spirit dream seeded into the soil over 20 years ago. It was seeded into my soul from my parents and the generations before them. I rooted the seeds more intentionally with the increased awareness of a world wounded in so many ways. Our response to a world in struggle is the healing that comes from healthy soil, compost, seed, community, creativity, food, and future generations — all is prayer.
The dream of farming in a way that nourishes, heals, and creates is in a new season of cultivation. We are now starting seeds, inviting new seeds to companion/strengthen and deepen the roots that were started and sown throughout these many years. We continue to grow food, community, healing justice, and a resilient future. We are focusing on grounding that future in the next generation of growers.
In a healthy chemical-free garden, using the wisdom of natural eco-systems around us, the gardener/farmer gathers and seeds companion plants to support the crops they wish to grow. The companions might enhance soil fertility, repel or redirect pests, provide shade or trellising stems, or just mysteriously help the other plant thrive and flourish.
This is an invitation for you to be seed companions - community - as DG deepens the roots to foundation our future. The DG mentoring/employment program seeds a healthier future for land, food systems, and communities. We cultivate, support, and provide healing spaces for aspiring growers of food and community, especially those from communities most devastated by historical land loss, racialized violence, and other marginalizing factors.
For total transparency I am someone who would prefer to shovel mounds of chicken doo and compost (while singing and praying) to jumping through and into web and paperwork intricacies. I’ve recently witnessed brilliant creative friends’ successful Kick Starter campaigns for super cool projects. With my leaning towards the simple hands-on, I offer this simpler “Seed Starter” Campaign to usher in this DG’s rooting for our future.
Here’s some of the story…
DIASPORA GARDENS on Madeline Island is a Black Woman led micro-farm devoted to nourishment and healing of Black, BIPOC and marginalized community members, our neighbors, our watershed and planet. The seeds for this were sown in my childhood of seeding and harvesting with the traditions, songs, stories, and prayers of my father who grew up with agriculture integrated into all aspects of life in Haiti; and my mama who grew up sharecropping in rural South Carolina. These seeds were cultivated further with a two-year spiritual formation experience and a pilgrimage to South Africa.
Our Land-Art-Spirit initiative engages traditional growing practices and art forms for:
1) Regenerative Farming to feed people and tend the planet;
2) Connective Art & Healing Justice via cultural & respite experiences, intercultural partnerships, immersions, community gatherings, and resourcing BIPOC land-based projects
3) Future Tending to mentor, employ and train marginalized farmers, and resource other cultural garden projects.
For years Diaspora Gardens has served the land as well as children, families, youth, young adults, classes, churches, women, people of many cultures with food, wellness, arts and spirit offerings, and mentorships. The mentorship and employment program drew amazing young people who often came from intense times of transition and exploration around racial and gender identities. A new season is emerging as the call into this work and relationship grows.
The last five years have been a pivotal visioning, exploration, and discernment time. The havoc and the interconnectedness of pandemic, the eruption of racialized violence and public killings into visibility that couldn’t be ignored, the wild growth of isolating and even threatening divisions, my own journey with loss and illness and its slowing impact. All held with the companioning of soil, lake, seed, community, family, and organizations fighting mightily to heal and right the world. This time of deep questioning, examination, prayer, and teachings clarified a number of truths…
As I step into the guiding empowering role of an elder, Diaspora Gardens is restructuring itself to emphasize mentoring and employing a team of developing farmers/creative community cultivators. This seeds a stronger future for the team members, Diaspora Gardens, and our world.
Healing
This program offers the cohort participants deeper birthright connections to healthy land, food, traditions, and empowering skill development.
This is expanded further as Diaspora Gardens steps into an exciting partnership with neighboring Anishinaabe communal farm - Manitou Makoons Gitigaan. We are exploring together Black and Indigenous land-based intercultural healing in our 2026 SEEDING KINSHIP event, and also in how we live and grow together as neighbors. We know our healing fosters the healing of all of us!
Our Mentorship/Employment cohort will be part of this partnership — at once receiving the gifts of this unique experience, and powering it.
Just, Fair, Reciprocal Employment
An important part of deepening this core piece of Diaspora Gardens is practicing a reciprocal and just economic model. In other words, we know we receive greatly from the participants in our employment and mentorship even as we offer ourselves to them. Also, the participants will be compensated justly with opportunities to grow livelihood from the Diaspora Gardens enterprise each one devotes to. This will be offered with dignity and respect for the land and those who bring themselves to this work. This runs counter to how our society’s economic models typically work for those who live at the edges. Hence, we need our companions: you?
To support one participant for our growing season costs $18,000. We aspire to three participants, with at least one continuing year-round.
To accomplish this, we build our community. We are also seeding a new legal structure for Diaspora Gardens. We are becoming a Social Enterprise Small Business. This allows us to strengthen enterprises to generate finances to support this deepening work. I mentioned earlier about preferences for compost over paperwork… I am deeply grateful for current assistance from community members and organizations. And would greatly appreciate the sense of more folks cheering me on… “having my back.” Hence, I so welcome companions: you?
These are the existing Diaspora Gardens enterprises seeded over the past 20 years. Our business structuring is to allow us to deepen and strengthen these enterprises to support the cohort and to cultivate their experience, power, and capacity:
Garden Produce
Herbal and Wellness products
Land-Based Cultural Healing Immersions and events
Land-Based Community Arts Events
SEEDS of REPAIR online Subscriptions
I invite you into this Community Supported Seed Starting, Root Deepening campaign.
Ways to support and engage SEED STARTING campaign now:
~ Subscribe to SEEDS of REPAIR.
This is the online creative reflection and invitation writings, musings and movings that rise from our life devoted to regenerating earth and community. Pay as you are led.
~ Work & Rooting Visit to Diaspora Gardens
In these 1-3 day visits for 1-3 people, you would offer your labor, experience the land, and - if able - make a financial offering.
To Arrange a Visit, Please Fill Out This Form: