Abundance Garden

The Union’s Abundance Garden includes 960 square feet of raised garden beds, a geodesic dome greenhouse for seedlings and off-season growing, a small fruit-tree orchard, composting facilities, a performance space, and an outdoor classroom used for community events and The Union’s Youth Engagement programs.

We’re incredibly grateful to The Peter Kiewit Foundation, The Lozier Foundation, The Whole Kids Foundation, and Mulhall’s for their generosity & support in the development of the Abundance Garden!

Our mission also greatly benefits through our ongoing partnerships with community collaborators: City Sprouts, Big Garden, No More Empty Pots, Sunflower Cooperative, Free Farm Syndicate, and Blazing Star Seed Co-Op. Sharing produce, programming, plants, and seeds enables us to continue addressing food deserts in our communities while advancing not just food security, but also food sovereignty. By empowering individuals and fostering collaboration, we move closer to a future where everyone has access to the resources they need to thrive.

The Union's Free Produce Stand has concluded for 2024. We will return in summer of 2025!

Growing Plants in Community

We aim to create intentional systems of support within beds that not only group plants together harmoniously and maximize space, but also create plant communities and combinations that encourage and reinforce growth. For example, we are planning to grow a three sisters garden of corn, beans and squash. Indigenous Communities have planted these three crops together for centuries to take advantage of their mutually beneficial properties. The corn provides stalks that the beans can climb so they don’t have to compete with the squash vines. The beans fix nutritious nitrogen to the soil and support the corn during winds while the squash plants shade the soil and conserve moisture.

Our plan also includes a bed that holds marigolds, collards and tomatoes. The climbing tomato plants will provide shade to the collards while the collards will in turn create a thick canopy over the soil, preserving soil moisture and blocking weed growth. The scent of both the collards and marigolds will repel harmful pests from the tomato plants.

We also aim to create plant communities and systems of support by rotating the type of crops planted in the beds. We made sure to move plants in the brassica family, like kale, into beds that brassicas were not grown in the previous year. We did the same sort of rotation with plants in the nightshade family, like tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. These plants ask for a lot of nutrients, so we have replaced them with things like beans that are nitrogen fixers, and pull nutrients up from deep in the ground. We aim to be intentional in thinking about where and next to what plants will grow the best in the garden.

Planting intentionally allows us to grow plant communities that are more self-sustaining and more likely to give us a better harvest–consequently allowing us to share more produce and create stronger links to our community. We are also looking to plant crops that have run out quickly at the produce stand–those extra popular items! We hope to offer more greens and tomatoes (green and ripe) this year.

Seed Saving

Another important development is our seed saving work with Free Farm Syndicate and Blazing Star Seed Co-Op. We are participating in coordinated growing in order to participate in a broader seed-saving initiative in Omaha. Through cooperative seed saving, we are increasing capacity for self-sustainability and growing inter-communal connections in Omaha.This year we are specifically growing King of the North bell peppers and Mary Reynolds tomatoes to save seed from. To learn more about seed saving and getting involved visit our garden or check out Free Farm Syndicate’s page!