It’s growing season for a new gardening initiative

HUFF & CO.

Professional chef Mariah Henry launched the Urban Haven at The Stead, a community garden in East Charlotte.

Mariah Henry’s passion is teaching food sustainability.

Henry launched The Urban Haven at The Stead, a community garden at The Stead apartment complex in East Charlotte just outside the I-485 loop. The garden will include raised beds with an heirloom garden, culinary workshops, food days and field days.

“I jumped at the opportunity when the idea was presented to me,” said Henry, a professional chef with degrees from Florida A&M and Johnson and Wales universities. “It was something that fit right at home and was something that I was looking to do in kind of my next step or phase in my professional and personal endeavors.”

Henry’s culinary background that has taken her across the country, but something was calling her back to Charlotte, where she earned a culinary arts degree at J&W.

“I came back and started my own private chef business,” Henry said. “I’ve had a couple of clients that I’ve maintained over the last couple of years, but I’ve kind of toned it down a little bit in the food scene. In early 2022 that is when I really jumped back into agriculture.”

Parts of east and west Charlotte are defined as food deserts because of the lack of accessibility to healthy foods. Because those communities have a larger percentage of people living below the federal poverty line, Henry feels the Urban Haven will help people learn how to grow their own food.

“Showing people that agriculture is much more than planting plants is important,” she said. “It is something that helps you be sustainable. What can we learn from this vegetable from the time it goes into the ground, to harvest, to what we use it for as food.”

Henry is merging her culinary and agricultural experience to educate people at The Stead, a 275-unit apartment complex as well as other parts of Charlotte.

“It is exciting to me that there is going to be this community that maybe hasn’t heard of agriculture before, to now learn about it and that I can be the one to help teach them about it,” she said. “I think it is one of the biggest gifts that we have is to talk about food access. There is a lot of talk about food deserts in an insecure way. But it’s just the foundation and the knowledge about being able to cultivate things you can grow on your balcony.”

When she first saw the property where Urban Haven is located, Henry started thinking of ways to get the community involved.

“This creativity is just a gift I was given to like shoot for the stars,” she said. “I want to show people that this is something they can do without someone having to manage it or have someone help guide it. My goal is to be able to drop the seed and people will want to help grow the idea themselves.”

Henry sees the initiative as an opportunity to change the narrative of urban agricultural decline.

“I like to call this our new Urban Haven because it’s our community's little private space,” she said. “It is something I get excited about. Being able to get back to helping grow urban agriculture and see just what that looks like.”

Henry’s goals are large: Help start community gardens while changing the idea behind them. She doesn’t want all the work to fall on one person, which is often the case. She wants to educate people before starting gardens so they will have an interest in maintaining them.

“My plans are big,” Henry said, “but, I think they are obtainable. This is something that I’ve had in mind since college and now it is happening and kind of clicking and sticking. Hopefully having someone like me help teach people about agriculture will help out.”

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