Buffalo Rising Online

Apr 6th 2008, 9:30am By Elizabeth Spavento

The success of Urban Roots, Buffalo's first and only cooperative gardening center, may have surprised its founders but not its neighbors. Having just bought two adjacent lots in March, the store doubled the size of its outdoor nursery, cementing the establishment's position in the West Side community. As any good retailer knows, adding size means adding responsibility. Luckily, Urban Roots recruited Michael Murphy, the store's new manager. Having moved to Buffalo this February from Atlanta, Michael has proven to be a knowledgeable and articulate advocate for Urban Roots and its mission to make positive changes on the West Side.

Blair Woods, one of Urban Roots' board members, speaks of the skepticism he encountered when Urban Roots initially opened on Rhode Island. "I think, for a lot of people who are jaded and have given up, they see this huge pack of member-owners and volunteers who bought a building and four empty lots and evicted a problem corner store that dealt in beer, lottery tickets, and crack cocaine. It had become the status quo, and they think we're crazy," he said. "And then a few weeks later, they get it. They start picking up the trash in front of their houses, and it snowballs. We had neighborhood kids hanging out in our yard all last summer, helping water plants, planting seeds. For the first time in their lives, they started respecting their neighbors and looking out for their neighborhood."

This is great news for Urban Roots considering that they ran out of room to store their inventory of organic, hard to find, and local foliage less than a year later from the day they officially opened. The new lots have been fenced off and plans are already underway to expand the store's outdoor nursery. There are even talks of setting up a greenhouse and an outdoor shelter to host various community workshops and seminars. "We had over forty people at our last seeding workshop," says Murphy. "We tired the best we could to accommodate them all, but an outdoor facility would make things a lot easier." The additional room available to Urban Roots did not come a minute late. With the garden walk coming up in July, the store will prepare for the busiest season of the year and is currently looking for volunteers to help prepare for this spring's surge of customers.

Urban Roots is just one example of how a little initiative can go a long way. "There's energy in the air," responds Michael Murphy when asked what drew him to Urban Roots. "You can tell that the Buffalo and Niagara region is about to explode. We have started to take back the neighborhood, and I am excited to be a part of the economic changes taking place in the city."