Neighborhoods

Your guide to food access in Dorchester

See Boston.com’s list of the community organizations working to combat food insecurity in Dorchester.

The Nightingale Community Garden in Dorchester's Codman Square neighborhood is one of the oldest and largest of Boston’s nearly 60 community gardens. (Photo by Annie Jonas/Boston.com)

By Annie Jonas

4 minutes to read

Elnora Thompson has been the garden coordinator for the Nightingale Community Garden in the Codman Square neighborhood of Dorchester for around 40 years. 

The Nightingale Community Garden is one of the oldest and largest of Boston’s nearly 60 community gardens. It was founded in the 1970s by residents who reclaimed the empty lot (formerly the site of the Florence Nightingale Community School, which burned down, according to Thompson) and transformed it into a shared garden space. 

The community garden is especially important in Dorchester, a neighborhood that has long been considered a food desert. Dorchester is one of Boston’s most underserved neighborhoods when it comes to grocery stores with nutritious foods and 18.1 percent of Dorchester households are food insecure, according to the city’s Food Access Agenda, released in 2021.

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Nightingale now has grown to host 132 plots for people from the surrounding neighborhoods in Dorchester, Roxbury, West Roxbury, and Hyde Park. Some gardeners have been farming at the garden for over 30 years, Thompson said. She has been a lifelong gardener.  

Thompson grew up in a large family in the South and learned how to grow fruits and vegetables on her grandfather’s farm and from her mother. She moved to Dorchester in the late 1960s and quickly became involved in community gardening.

“I grew up with my hands in the dirt,” she said. “When it came time to elect the coordinator for the [Nightingale Community] garden — it was mostly men in the garden and nobody wanted to do it — so I just volunteered. I’m a little bit bossy,” she said, laughing heartily over a phone interview.

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The gardeners at Nightingale Community Garden plant all kinds of fresh produce, ranging from broccoli, brussel sprouts, and garlic to tomatoes, wildflowers, and zucchini. Each gardener grows food for themselves and their family and some donate their fresh produce to local food pantries, Thompson said.

The gardeners at Nightingale Community Garden plant all kinds of fresh produce, ranging from broccoli, brussel sprouts, and garlic to tomatoes, wildflowers, and zucchini. (Photo by Annie Jonas/Boston.com)

Neighborhood residents may have only a handful of options for their grocery shopping but progress is slowly being made to address food insecurity, Thompson said.

“We have a ways to go, but I think we have improved greatly,” she said, pointing to the newly opened Dorchester Food Co-op and America’s Food Basket grocery stores as signs that the neighborhood is slowly, but surely, gaining grocery stores with nutritious, fresh foods.

Not only are fresh foods and produce good for physical health, but gardening has numerous physical and mental health benefits, studies show. Community gardens specifically can reduce food insecurity, improve dietary intake, and strengthen family relationships, according to a Journal of Community Health study.

Thompson agreed, describing gardening as a way to connect with her community and find peace of mind and body.

“If you don’t feel well or whatever is on your mind for that day, you just go to the garden and it’s like walking into a different world,” she said. “You walk into the gate and you have all your buddies talking together. It’s relaxing, it’s invigorating, it keeps you young.”

See Boston.com’s list of food access resources in Dorchester. Share any resources we missed in the form below or e-mail [email protected].

Food banks, pantries, and soup kitchens

Grocery stores

Community gardens and urban farms

Profile image for Annie Jonas

Annie Jonas

Annie Jonas is a Community writer at Boston.com. She was previously a local editor at Patch and a freelancer at the Financial Times.

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