community gardens

s rain clouds gathered above, Danielle Andrews bent down to reach into the soil in a section of an urban farm in Roxbury. She lodged her hands into the rich dirt and tugged at something underground before pulling out two earth-covered potatoes, one with dozens of tendril-like protrusions sprouting from its skin.

As a child, Jessie Dambreville would look out her window at an open lot next door, near the Neponset River in Mattapan. Full of weeds and walnut trees, the space sat empty for years, serving mostly as a shortcut home.