Dennis Brown uses gardening to enrich underserved communities.
Twice a month, volunteers at the transitional housing complex harvest a few sunflower bouquets to sell at the St. Johns Farmers Market. The rest of the bright-yellow blooms form a living billboard for the residents, who had previously experienced homelessness.
“The flowers attract people to come out here and look at things,” says Dennis Brown, a Master Gardener who invites anyone who visits to attend his monthly drop-in classes in the garden — or simply join him for a few minutes as he harvests potatoes, green beans or ears of corn.
“The garden is both educational and a place of respite,” Brown says.
Brown’s work with the Bybee Lakes Hope Center is just one of his innovative volunteer projects. This past summer, the Oregon State University Extension Master Gardener Program and nonprofit Oregon Master Gardener Association presented Brown with their first Growing and Belonging Award for his work teaching gardening skills to African American community organizations, immigrant workers, military veterans and people experiencing homelessness.
“The key to the success of each of these community projects has been how well Dennis listens to the needs of the community and adapts how Master Gardeners can support, educate and serve,” says Marcia McIntyre, program representative for the Metro Area OSU Extension Service Master Gardener Program. “He's a community cultivator.”
“Leading garden education classes for the Bybee Lakes community and other local nonprofits knits together my interests in environmental stewardship, sustainable agriculture and connecting communities,” Brown says.
He hopes that the award will inspire other Master Gardeners to search out creative ways to share their expertise with people from historically underserved communities.
Post-retirement return to the garden
Brown grew up on his family’s Iowa farm, where they maintained a large kitchen garden and orchard. He became so interested in growing plants that he studied horticulture all through college and graduate school, earning his doctorate in plant biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
For 30 years, Brown worked in the San Francisco Bay Area as an environmental consultant for engineering and planning firms. Nearing retirement, he found his way back to horticulture, becoming a California-certified Master Gardener in 2010. After moving to northeast Portland in 2015 and now retired, Brown enrolled in OSU Extension’s Master Gardener training — not to repeat his education, he says, but to meet like-minded people and learn how to share his skills with his new community.
Brown was drawn to be a Master Gardener by its sense of mission. In 2022, the Portland Metro Area's 361 Master Gardeners provided more than 22,000 hours of volunteer service in their communities. Brown has taught classes at libraries and Fix-It Fairs and answered questions at the Metro Area Master Gardener helpline. Then a volunteer request from the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority set him on a new path.
The Portland Alumnae chapter of this African American public-service organization has operated the June Key Delta Community Center in north Portland since 2011. In 2019, the Deltas were looking for a community partner to renovate the building's gardens. Brown helped the sorority secure a grant to build new raised beds, then organized a team of Master Gardeners to show volunteers how to assemble them.
Brown also taught OSU Extension’s Seed to Supper program for participants in the Voz Worker's Rights Education Project, which empowers day laborers and new immigrants to improve their working conditions. Aided by an interpreter, Brown taught the six-week gardening class to workers who had moved to Portland from across the U.S. and Latin America.
Gardening and grant-making
Brown has continued to use his grant-making skills to help both the Deltas and Voz fund new projects. He also introduced the two groups to each other. Thanks in part to a grant Voz won in 2020, Brown helped Voz workers landscape the June Key Center gardens with native plants, then taught several rounds of gardening classes.
In 2021, Brown came across a newspaper article about the Bybee Lakes Hope Center and the 3-acre Victory Garden that Portland nonprofit VetREST was planting on site. Brown approached VetREST and Helping Hands Re-Entry Centers, the organization that had transformed this never-used prison facility into a transitional residence for 300 people. Together with Hope Center residents, Brown and VetREST volunteers have planted watermelons, peppers, tomatoes, corn and squash.
For the past two years, Brown and a team of four Master Gardeners have taught monthly Horticulture for Life classes at Bybee Lakes. He also secured a grant to buy 30 cubic yards of compost to amend the soil and build trellises for grapes and berries. Brown comes to the garden several days a week to tend the plants, advise staff who grow food that’s served to residents and greet anyone attracted by the yellow sunflowers.
Brown doesn't see the classes he's teaching as job training programs or as a way to help people grow their own food.
“It’s not just about gardening,” he says. “It’s providing people with an experience to enrich their lives. Some people I teach have been houseless for a while and haven't had structure.
“Gardening is a hopeful, forward-looking process. You plan the garden. You plant seeds. The seeds grow. You might have some difficulties along the way, but at the end, you get a harvest.”