ORGANIC GROWTH

BLISS Meadows enriches its community through natural and farmed green spaces.

THERE ARE GOATS grazing in a meadow in Northeast Baltimore. There’s also a coop full of chickens with names like Scarlet, Rusty, and Lemongrab. And across 10 acres that were once abandoned by the city, there are crops being planted and a natural forest being tended by dedicated stewards and volunteers. This piece of land, spread across Barbara and Parkwood Park, is BLISS Meadows.

The urban green space in Frankford is the brainchild of Atiya Wells, center, who went to the lot to explore the space after noticing it on Google Maps in 2017. Wells, a pediatric nurse, had grown up with her grandmother’s garden and worked with plants at home. After reading Leah Penniman’s Farming While Black, Wells was inspired to develop the space, which had been abandoned and overgrown for decades, into a place that could enrich and teach the neighborhood through nature.