Jeff Matheus, a board member for Urban Seed, tends to a bed of vegetable plants at the new south Warren community garden Aug. 27.
By: Brian Wells | Warren Weekly | Published September 1, 2025
WARREN — The organization behind the Eastpointe Community Garden is helping to launch another one in Warren.
Since getting its start in 2012, Urban Seed has helped provide community-driven resources to help combat food insecurity and improve health and create local connections. In June, they started a second garden in Warren, on Toepfer Road east of Schoenherr Road.
The idea to start a community garden came after Jeff Matheus, who serves as a board member for Urban Seed, and Lauren Schandevel visited the garden in Eastpointe in 2023.
“It feels like people are just kind of going to and from work a lot of the time. It doesn’t seem like they have a lot of opportunity for recreation or something that beautifies or enriches their day right within the sphere of where they live,” Matheus said.
Shandoval said they wanted to create a space where residents could hang out without having to buy things.
“Part of the appeal was creating a space for people in the city, particularly this part of the city, to be able to congregate, hang out and do stuff together and meet their neighbors,” she said.
The lease for the property is only for one year, which Schandevel said was heavily enforced before they signed it.
“This is very much like a trial run to see how we do and how many people are interested,” Shandeval said. “Our hope for the future is that we can either renew the lease or be able to purchase the property at some point so that we’re able to maintain it long term.
Conditions of the lease included not being able to store equipment on the property, which John Hofmann, Urban Seed’s founder and treasurer, said caused them to scale back on how much of the property would be used.
“We have to maintain this, and we’re unable to have a lawn mower on location, so we have to rely on volunteers to bring in lawn mowers so that we can continue to maintain the property,” he said. “Originally, we were going to be looking at this full three quarters of an acre, and then at the last minute, we had to reassess what we would be actually capable of maintaining so that it would be a success for this first year.”
The garden was approved in June, which Hofmann said is late in the gardening season. Despite these limitations, he said the garden has seen success — in both the amount of produce grown and the connections being formed in the neighborhood.
“I don’t think that we’ve had a single person express any distaste for the program,” he said. “Even people that aren’t interested in getting involved have stopped to say, ‘I really appreciate that this exists. It’s better for this to be a garden than a vacant lot.’”
As of Aug. 27, Hofmann said they’ve given away 72 pounds of produce and have logged 365 volunteer hours.
Hofmann said bringing Urban Seed to Warren after starting a garden in Eastpointe felt “impossible,” but despite uncertainties around the future of the Warren garden, the support from residents and other organizations — including the Macomb County Health Department — feels encouraging.
“Even if we were to go away, the amount of residents that have taken ownership of this program, they would continue to maintain this, regardless of what anybody had to say,” he said. “They love the fact that (the garden) exists. And for us as an organization, I think we’re really excited to continue to build it out and share all of the information that we have.”
Produce grown on-site is available to the community at no cost.
Hofmann said the garden currently has about 15 regular volunteers, but they’re always seeking more. For information on how to get involved, go to urbanseed.info/volunteer.