Detroit mom's Gro-Town gardening organization for kids has given away 28,000 seed packets
As Detroit mom Danielle Carlomusto was raising her twins, she started noticing something about books and music and videos aimed at kids. So much of children’s media was about things that are big — superheroes and dinosaurs, outer space and sharks, unicorns and castles and bears.
It was almost as if her kids were being told that small things just don’t matter very much. Carlomusto could not have disagreed more.
She remembered her grandfather’s garden on Penrod Street. How even an Italian immigrant busy with seven kids used seeds and soil to bring the community together. Neighbors would gather for barbecues under his pergola covered in grapes; the half-apricot, half-plum tree; and the fava beans tall enough to hide in.
The wonderment and excitement of gardening
“He didn’t speak a word of English, didn’t have a dime to his name, but he had this big, beautiful garden … which filled in all of those gaps for him,” said Carlomusto. “It didn’t matter because they were speaking the language of food. They were speaking the language of community.”
This was the language Carlomusto turned to when she wanted to grow her own organization that would create that same sense of connectedness for children in Detroit.
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Gro-Town is now in its fifth year of spreading wonderment and excitement about gardening through free seeds distributed at public libraries, and a portfolio of original songs Carlomusto records and performs. She organizes events where children can take home seed packets and enjoy a “musical story time” led by Miss Danielle, as Carlomusto is known when she visits classrooms and in her videos, which feature community gardens and public spaces around Detroit that will be familiar to kids who live there.
“My message is that the smallness of life and the smallness of a seed is worthy of our time and our gratitude and our attention,” Carlomusto said. “When you see images and you hear music and you experience things in your community that are reflective of your own life and reflective of your reality, it's a reminder that your life matters.”
‘Where’s the song about that banana we just ate?’
Carlomusto’s twins were 2 years old when the idea for Gro-Town was planted. “They’re making these beautiful connections to and about the world around them every moment of the day,” she remembered. “And then I found that making the transition into children’s media was antithetical to everything that was naturally speaking to them.”
Her kids were discovering the snap of a green pepper from the garden box and their shadows on the grass. But children’s programming was all animated characters and green screens and fantasy worlds. “I’m like, 'where’s the song about the banana we just ate? Because they’re super excited about bananas.' ”
When Carlomusto couldn’t find one, she wrote one herself.
Songs were a natural first step for the lifelong musician, who crafted upbeat melodies and lyrics for an album featuring the humble things she noticed her children were curious about. Digging in the dirt. Birds. Bananas, of course.
The first garden-themed children’s album, released with Detroit Public Television/PBS Kids, was followed by a sophomore record that appeared on this year's first-round Grammy ballot for Best Children’s Album, and is a current Detroit Music Awards nominee.
Carlomusto started filming videos, asking her husband to hold a camera while she traveled around Detroit in her dark blue overalls — to the Detroit Abloom community garden to feature honeybees, and Plymouth orchards to sing about apples. Her videos featured community members she hoped kids would recognize and relate to: the guy who runs the corner deli; a local chef.
“We’ve made childhood so big,” Carlomusto said. “How can we make it smaller and show the value in that smallness? That our communities are OK (places in which) to find meaning and gratitude and discovery and wonderment about our small and simple world around us?”
But Carlomusto wasn’t satisfied. It was still media that children would consume passively.
She launched a podcast aimed at little gardeners. She asked even more local businesses for unsold seed packets and had a local artist paint boxes to hold them. She approached the Detroit Public Library with her idea of having seed libraries, where kids could come explore the options for growing something of their own.
Carlomusto wanted to bring it all into the physical world. She wanted it to be accessible and free: no hurdles.
“I don’t need a registration fee, you don’t need cleats, you don’t need tutus, you just need to get to a public library — these stalwarts of the community,” she said. “Get yourself a gardening book. Get yourself a packet of seeds from Gro-Town seed station, and let's create this experience for this child.”
By the end of this season, Gro-Town will have distributed about 28,000 seed packets to kids.
“That’s invaluable in teaching them how to grow their own food, or even just the science of it, like where our food comes from,” said Lauren Gray, a former educator and family farmer who works to support kids in Detroit. “I think that’s just a really noble and valuable thing she’s doing just with the seeds alone.”
‘It will never not be magical’
Carlomusto hopes children leave a Gro-Town event feeling inspired to grow something, maybe something they can share with a neighbor or a friend. But even if the seed packets languish forgotten in a backpack or a drawer, she’s not bothered. One day, she believes, that child will make the connection. Between planting and growing, harvesting and nourishing, sharing and connecting. As enthusiastic as she is about gardening, Carlomusto is also patient. Everything in its time and season.
And as much as Carlomusto values and uplifts the tiny, she hopes that Gro-Town can continue to get bigger. She’d like to find partners to help develop videos for an elementary school curriculum. She wants to reach more children with the wondrous possibility that an entire pergola full of grapes, or a plot bursting with fava beans — even a neighborhood full of friends — can come from a packet of seeds.
“It will never not be magical to me to take this little seed and watch what happens,” she said.
Jennifer Brookland covers child welfare for the Detroit Free Press in partnership with Report for America. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support her work at bit.ly/freepRFA. Reach her at jbrookland@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Gro-Town kids gardening organization in Detroit offers seeds, podcast
