Survival Bloc, a BIPOC-led climate survival network based in Kentucky and New York City, recently launched Grandmother’s Garden, a food production project in the West End of Louisville.
According to the USDA’s Food Access Research from 2020, 68.5% of Louisville residents lived over a mile from their nearest grocery. In the East End, there are multiple Kroger stores, two Publix markets, a Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and more – while in the West End, over 60,000 residents are shopping between two full-service grocery stores, the local Black Market KY on West Market Street and convenience stores.
Grandmother’s Garden is a community effort to bring fresh food to areas of Louisville that do not have those resources, particularly the West End, which has very few grocery stores, Alastair Flowers, a member of Survival Bloc’s stewardship team working on Grandmother’s Garden, said.
Food apartheid refers to food inaccessibility as a result of systemic, racial, and economic segregation in food access that disproportionately affects Black and Brown people and low-income people. Black and Brown neighborhoods typically have fewer supermarkets and more fast food options and convenience stores. In 2023, one in four Black people in the United States experienced food apartheid, according to the USDA.
“Grandma’s garden is one of those efforts in order to bring fresh produce to people who otherwise lack those kinds of resources,” Flowers said. “It is intended to be a community effort to bring individuals of the community together in order to foster better relationships between people there and create a better environment.”
Survival Bloc’s quarter-acre will be an herb and vegetable garden, an education space, and a water catchment and filtration system, with one eighth-acre hosting a high tunnel to be able to grow food, and then another quarter-acre of land that will be prepped in the spring to begin growing crops there.
The program’s name is inspired by Alice Walker’s book “Our Mother’s Garden,” and the program itself was inspired by the works of different Black feminists, including Audre Lorde, Assata Shakur, and Walker.
“Their work expresses the importance of community building and how community building is found within the home,” Flowers said. “It’s a source of how we’re able to feed people and from there, able to provide people the sense of safety in order to facilitate more connection, more growth.”
Flowers described the Black Panther Party’s work to create the Free Breakfast Program in 1969 to combat childhood hunger as an essential program that served as one of the inspirations for Grandmother’s Garden.
Their breakfast program quickly spread across the U.S., forcing the federal government to adopt a national school breakfast program in 1975. This program is still in schools today, and as of 2016, 14.57 million children were participating in their school breakfast program nationwide, according to the USDA.
over a mile from their nearest grocery. | Credit: Debra Murray
“The free breakfast program, which was initiated by the Black Panther Party and Assata Shakur herself, to further along and provide for communities, and just doing that is what led to nationalized free breakfast programs through schools themselves,” Flowers said. “When we look at the actions of so many black female revolutionaries, we can see how the simple act of providing people with food, with care in a community, can establish so much.”
Eventually, Survival Bloc plans to host workshops and educational events as the space further develops.
Survival Bloc’s first event relating to Grandmother’s Garden is a West End Town Hall for people interested in becoming involved in the project and learn about how the garden plans to address problems faced by West End residents. The West End Town Hall is on March 23 at 2 p.m. EST at the Catholic Enrichment Center, 3146 W Broadway.
If you’re interested in becoming involved with Survival Bloc, follow them on Instagram or subscribe to their newsletter to stay up-to-date about different involvement opportunities.
This article appears in March 1-24, 2026.