‘We are all Deeply Rooted’

By: Christina Hernandez Sherwood

When Janaiya Reason was growing up in West Philadelphia, the closest park to her home was eight blocks away. There was no green space in between.

Now, as community engagement manager for Deeply Rooted, a community-academic collaborative at the Penn Medicine Center for Health Justice that brings nature to neighborhoods that have experienced decades of disinvestment, Reason is spearheading an effort to transform or upgrade seven spaces throughout West and Southwest Philadelphia into miniature parks and partnering with community groups as they grow green projects of their own imagining. 

“Some people view having trees and green space as amenities, not necessities. They feel that only wealthier neighborhoods get prioritized, not my neighborhood,” Reason said. “But we should have access to urban nature. The benefits it provides are so significant.” 

Penn Medicine’s Urban Health Lab, now part of the Center for Health Justice, led by executive director and associate vice president for Health Justice Eugenia (Gina) South, MD, MS, established Deeply Rooted in 2022 to leverage the healing power of nature to promote health and safety in eight West and Southwest Philadelphia communities: Kingsessing, Paschall, Elmwood, Cobbs Creek, Haddington, Mill Creek, Carroll Park, and Belmont. Funded with an initial $6 million investment from Penn Medicine and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Deeply Rooted draws upon South’s research showing the health impact of disinvestment in neighborhoods—from vacant lots to dilapidated housing—and the positive impact of greenery.  

Recently, the Philadelphia 76ers Youth Fund invested an additional $125,000 to support the program’s miniature parks. 

Partners in community action 

Deeply Rooted is built on insights from South’s research which has established connections between greening and public health and safety. But Deeply Rooted itself is not a research endeavor. It is a partnership in which the academic members recognize and equally value the knowledge of members of the community. 

Deeply Rooted draws on the expertise of its two dozen community partners to determine where to plant trees, green vacant lots, build miniature parks, and provide microgrants, said Nicole Thomas, MBA, director of the Center for Health Justice and its Urban Health Lab, which facilitates the program. “It’s not, ‘We’re Deeply Rooted and you’re our community partners,’” she said. “It’s ‘We’re all Deeply Rooted.’” 

Listening and respecting the history and experience of community members are crucial for this work.  

“In Philadelphia, trees get a bad rap,” Reason said. “People live on properties where a tree planted maybe 50 or 60 years ago is tearing up the pavement or causing sewer line problems. So we think about the way we present trees. Instead of planting trees that are super huge, we focus on planting the right type of trees in the right place. That helps the community to feel a bit more comfortable having trees in their neighborhood.” 

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS), the green space implementation partner for Deeply Rooted, solicits community feedback and handles the permitting process before planting trees and remediating vacant lots, said PHS President Matt Rader, who is also connected to Penn as a 2011 Wharton graduate. “If a resident envisions something green they want to do in their neighborhood,” he said, “we want to do everything possible to let them achieve that.”  

Traditionally, most tree maintenance is volunteer driven, which is why community enthusiasm is key, Rader said. Recognizing that maintenance needs might limit enthusiasm for trees in the neighborhoods they partner with, Deeply Rooted does fund contractor care for newly planted trees in the first year. PHS hires small local contractors for those jobs, and to maintain remediated lots. 

As of mid-July 2024, Deeply Rooted had planted more than 820 trees and greened some 740 vacant lots. While one tree or remediated lot can make a difference, he said, the sheer scale of the Deeply Rooted effort is what makes it special. “If you clean and green all the vacant lots in a neighborhood, you have changed the environment,” Rader said. “Your perception of the neighborhood and your safety has totally changed. Working at that systemic level is hugely transformational.” 

Investing in locally grown ideas 

For Deeply Rooted, working to reverse historical disinvestment in neighborhoods also means, in part, directly investing funds in community-led efforts. 

A core component of Deeply Rooted is its Community Green Grants Program, which awards microgrants to initiatives that “care for, celebrate in and appreciate the nature in our communities.” Grant awardees are individuals or grassroots organizations, Reason said. “If it wasn’t for the funding Deeply Rooted provided, the awardees would not have been able to either start or continue their programs,” she said. “There just aren’t a lot of small grants.” 

The Black Farmers Co-op, an organization that runs a monthly Black Farmers Market in West Philadelphia, is among the most recent green grant awardees in summer 2024. The co-op will use the green grant to host an educational program that equips community members with hydroponic gardening equipment and knowledge of how to grow fresh food in their own homes. More people can save money on healthy foods by growing their own, said executive administrator of the co-op Amanda Ayala, and with hydroponics they can safely avoid concerns about lack of space and soil quality in an urban environment. 

Two-time Deeply Rooted community green grant awardee Jovian Patterson is chairman of the Original American Foundation, a community gardening nonprofit in Southwest Philadelphia. Patterson, whose nursing education inspired him to promote gardening’s physical and mental health benefits to an underserved urban population, said working with Deeply Rooted was coordinated with his mission. “The grant was about uplifting people of color,” he said. “It was aligned with what we were already doing.” 

Patterson used the funding to expand his annual community garden class, Original American Workshop. The free workshop, which has more than quadrupled in popularity in the past few years, teaches community members how to build garden boxes, plant crops from seeds or seedlings, mix soil, and more. “People come to our workshops and learn and pass it on to their family and friends,” he said. “The impact is that knowledge of self-sustainability that people can take with them wherever they go.” 

Community spaces that hit the spot 

Last summer, community collaboratives made up of local stakeholders in six neighborhoods—Mill Creek, Carroll Park, Cobbs Creek, Haddington, Kingsessing, and Belmont—were tasked with choosing locations to transform into mini parks. The idea, inspired by a process that South first pursued in the context of a research study, is to transform a previously vacant or underutilized small space into a vibrant greenspace for people who live nearby, using a community co-design process. The goal is to complete the parks by spring 2025. 

“We wanted the spaces to have some existing energy,” said Reason, the initiative’s community engagement manager. “We want to make sure the community is invested and the space is sustainable.” 

One mini park will be on the 5200 block of Kingsessing Avenue, where a community-based organization called Men of 52K helps connect a number of initiatives and volunteer efforts on the block—from a small community garden to violence prevention initiatives. The future mini park site was already cleared of overgrowth and trash through the community’s efforts more than a decade ago, and has since become a hangout space for small social gatherings. Children from the neighborhood also come here to read, taking books from one of the kiosks that Men of 52K keeps stocked with donated children’s literature. Two other kiosks are situated down the block, one of them in the community garden.  

In another part of the neighborhood, at 56th and Paschall Avenues, Jovian Patterson’s Original American Foundation community gardening nonprofit is planning a mini park that will be a natural space with garden beds, flowers, dwarf fruit trees in pots, rain barrels, sitting and grilling areas, and a gazebo. “People can pick some of the fresh produce there,” Patterson said. “They can grill out there. They can just sit and relax and enjoy the area.” 

Perhaps the most notable feature planned: a natural path leading from the mini park on 56th Street through to Allison Street. “From the mini park you can walk on a trail through one of our smaller gardens into the main, large garden,” Patterson said. “It will all be connected.” 

The foundation is acquiring the site for the park through the Philadelphia Land Bank, Patterson said. The foundation already owns adjacent land. Land ownership can be a significant environmental justice issue, South noted—citing examples of long-established community gardens on abandoned properties that have been razed for development, against community wishes. 

While most mini parks are planned for vacant lots, Reason said, one will take root in an existing green space: Clara Muhammad Square in Mill Creek. “We’ve come to think of mini parks as a spectrum,” she said. “It forced us to grow a bit and think differently based on what the community wanted.” 

A long-time local gathering space, the 3.6-acre Clara Muhammad Square sits adjacent to a school and two religious institutions. It has a playground and is frequently used for family cookouts and community events, including Eid celebrations, said E. Wafiqah Jibrin, executive assistant at the Philadelphia Masjid and a member of the Mill Creek community who helped decide on the location. “It’s not a park that’s just left to itself,” she said. “The people in the area love it.” 

Jibrin said she hopes possible upgrades to the park, such as a dedicated space for yoga and meditation classes, upgraded seating, and safety cameras, will draw even more children and families. “[Residents] would love to see more events, like movie night or live performances,” she said. “[The upgrades] would help tremendously.” 

Joining forces for transformational impact 

Part of what makes the impact of Deeply Rooted so powerful and so readily embraced by members of these West and Southwest Philadelphia neighborhoods is that it is truly a network of partnerships, not an intervention imposed from outside of the community. 

Jamila Harris-Morrison, executive director of Deeply Rooted partner ACHIEVEability, a community-based nonprofit in West Philadelphia, said she appreciated the collaborative nature of the process, especially considering Deeply Rooted is based at a large institution, which can dwarf a smaller nonprofit. “Our neighbors understand that this is being done with them, not to them,” she said. “This is not going to be transactional. We're looking for it to be transformational.” 

ACHIEVEability is working to revitalize a five-block commercial corridor on 60th Street, Harris-Morrison said. By joining forces with the city’s Parks and Recreation department, which was already planting trees on the street, the Deeply Rooted team doubled the impact. 

The commitment of the Deeply Rooted team was especially evident on a Friday in April, when ACHIEVEability hosted Impact Day, a six-hour volunteer sprint. Without being asked, the entire Deeply Rooted team volunteered for the event, Harris-Morrison said. “They helped us create pollinator gardens. They helped us mulch trees. I remember seeing [Thomas] with a clipboard directing people where to install 10 new trees,” she said. “They are invested in ACHIEVEability and our community beyond [specific Deeply Rooted] initiatives.” 

Explore related stories about health justice at Penn Medicine 

Health, greenery, and justice for all: Reversing racial inequities is a full-force effort rooted in research that includes gardens and parks, financial support, and lifting up local community members to lead the way. 

A large-scale research study of health, wealth, and greening: Combining economic assistance with greening initiatives in a randomized trial, IGNITE aims to show how to reverse the harms of racial injustice in health. 

From the neighborhood: For the Center for Health Justice, hiring people with deep roots of their own in West Philadelphia is key to partnering effectively to support healthier communities.