“Our mission at Convivium – to create community around food – began with the premise that most problems and challenges we experience in our culture today come from a lack of connection – from each other, from the environment, from the food we eat and from traditional skills and methods.

Every single activity, event and interaction at Convivium is designed as an antidote to the core issue of disconnection.

A key element of Convivium Urban Farmstead is our gardens. Our gardens are both educational and functional — they yield a significant amount of produce that we use in our fresh, made-from-scratch menu in the restaurant.

Because we are located in such a dense urban area, we knew from the outset that we wanted to model methods to do small scale gardening — container gardening, raised beds, growing vertically using trellises, straw bales, potato towers and edible landscaping. We wanted to show people ways that they could garden at their own homes, even if that was an apartment or if you had a small yard.

In addition to our production gardens, we also plant and tend a series of free community garden boxes throughout the neighborhood. These are yellow, raise-bed gardens that we call our Common Beds. We currently have seven throughout the neighborhood.

Our neighbors and passersby are encouraged to harvest whatever vegetables they would like. Each bed includes signage explaining the concept and giving instructions on how and when to harvest vegetables from the bed.”