Community gardens and one farm preserve work toward climate change resiliency in New Castle County.
That means seeing food production and ecosystem health as equally important.
Several gardens in Wilmington and the Coverdale Farm Preserve in Greenville share a priority: maintaining healthy soil.
Delaware Nature Society’s habitat outreach manager Kerry Wilson said folks really have to start at square one in Wilmington’s community gardens.
“It's dirt there. There's no carbon in the soil. It's completely devoid of any kind of nutrients. And so I think when you think about what's the basis of building back a healthy ecosystem, there's a very large imbalance in the urban environment,” Wilson said.
Nurturing soil allows gardeners to increase biodiversity in the city, which also brings insects to offset issues like overwhelming mosquito populations.
“When you have severe mosquito issues that could lead to getting severe diseases, and then just the contamination issues on top of that, we have all these compounding health effects… All of that is a result of having this hugely unbalanced ecosystem.”
Coverdale Farm Preserve director and manager Michele Wales Quinlan said her team treats their land similarly.
“We are kind of keeping that balance of ecosystem services that our land can provide on the same level as the amount of food our land can provide. And truly, if you don't think about them as equal partners, they're all going to suffer,” Wales Quinlan said.
Wales Quinlan said they maintain that system with living perennial root systems, having wide acreage and not tilling the soil.
Wales Quinlan’s team looks to mitigate storm damage on a daily basis.
“And seasonally, we are reducing soil erosion. We are building out these soil structures so that they're like giant sponges. They can absorb water.”
Each crop, farm and garden are small efforts toward sustainability and resiliency, Wilson said.
“One space alone may not have a large impact, but as you start adding up all the projects throughout the city, that cumulative impact could be quite large.”
