Each Thursday, a rotating group of roughly 40 volunteers gathers at the Gainesville Giving Garden, a community-led nonprofit farm that grows and donates fresh food in Alachua County to aid the underserved community.
Meg Boria-Meyer, the Gainesville Giving Garden founder and executive director, gathers volunteers into a circle under the late-afternoon sun. About two dozen people step closer, their hands eager to get to work. She gives the first-timers the gist: various community ongoings, the recent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program unease, other volunteer activities and local events.
“Does anyone want to add anything to the circle?” she asks.
The afternoon typically lasts from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., or until the sun sets. Calming music can be heard throughout the warm Gainesville air, complementing the golden-hour light shining on volunteers moving among rows of leafy greens and raised beds.
Amid the COVID-19 food-security crisis, Boria-Meyer came up with the idea of running a farm where the food was free. They situated the project on what was once an abandoned parking lot, and the owner of the lot has let them farm rent-free ever since.
The Gainesville Giving Garden has grown steadily since its first year, expanding from 1,000 pounds of produce to 5,000 pounds today. The space is still growing and continues to transform what was once poor, depleted soil into productive beds.
The Giving Garden has merged with Working Food, a community-rooted nonprofit, expanding its work through additional programs in seed saving, youth education and support for local agriculture. The farm remains committed to providing fresh produce to families in need and creating a space for community learning and connection.
Collards, kale, mustard greens, lettuces and salad greens are the most popular produce.
“We try to grow stuff that people recognize, so it's not this mystery that they're probably not going to use,“ Boria-Meyer said.
At the beginning of the event, Boria-Meyer breaks the crowd into small groups and assigns various tasks: redoing frost cloth storage, planting seedlings in the greenhouse, sowing sunflowers, weeding raised beds, planting chamomile, carrots, and beets, watering crops and reorganizing the greenhouse.
One of the groups was tasked with propagating sunflowers to help detoxify the newly developed soil. On the opposite side of the garden, another group was collecting leaves from different sunflowers to use as green manure. The garden does not really use commercial fertilizer.
The garden typically has six different distribution partners, sometimes seven or eight, depending on the need. They all serve a range of groups and numbers of people, Boria-Meyer said. Some of the garden’s partners include The Free Grocery Store and Food Not Bombs. She estimated that in a given month, about 400 people receive food from the garden.
In the opening circle, Boria-Meyer discussed how the garden was trying to grow as much food as possible during the federal government shutdown, which ended Nov. 12, amid paused SNAP benefits, generating unease in the community.
The pause heightened demand at local food distribution sites. Free Grocery Store, a local mutual-aid food bank, for example, saw twice the usual number of visitors during one of its distributions in November, Boria-Meyer said.
To meet the growing need, the Giving Garden and its partners have to think creatively. For example, half of the Thursday volunteers went to Siembra Farm, located in Gainesville, to collect leftover crops and bring them back to the garden, a process known as gleaning.
“So it's not only what we can grow, but it's what another farm is making available to our volunteers,” Boria-Meyer said.
Partner organizations are also contributing, and individuals are donating more shelf-stable items than before, Boria-Meyer said. Together, these efforts help ensure more food reaches those in need, showing how the community is working creatively to respond to food insecurity.
Even though the government has reopened, there is still hesitation with SNAP benefits in the community.
“There's mistrust, there's uncertainty of when those will actually land. I spoke with one individual yesterday who identifies as food insecure,” Boria-Meyer said. “She wasn't even certain if those benefits would even come through, even come January,” and was using words like “crisis” and “emergency.”
Since the Gainesville Giving Garden launched around April 2021, when 3.27 million Floridians were enrolled in SNAP, participation has remained high, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture data.
During COVID-19, in June 2020, 3.73 million residents relied on the program, compared with 42.9 million Americans nationwide, USDA figures show. SNAP use has steadily declined since then, dropping to 2.95 million Floridians in April 2025 and 2.93 million in June 2025, the latest USDA data indicates.
Giovanna Avellar, a University of Florida student, is part of a club known as Bigger Table. She was looking for volunteer opportunities for the club when she came upon the Giving Garden.
“I really like planting and haven’t done it in a while, and also helping people, building community and it’s a good cause,” Avellar said.
For returning volunteers, the garden has become a place to de-stress and connect with nature. Mackenzie Igdalasky is a senior at UF and in her third year of volunteering with the garden. She is also part of a school club, Med Life, which partners with the Gainesville Giving Garden for a monthly event. She said the Giving Garden has a strong community feel, and the volunteers support one another and collaborate on everything.
“It's a really, really good de-stress and kind of takes your mind off of the books for a second — spend some time outdoors, touch some grass, do some planting, kind of just engage with nature,” Igdalasky said. “Like Meg always says, find your own version of productivity. You can stop and stare at the flowers and look at butterflies here if you want, and that's being productive.”
Matt Power, who has been volunteering for a few months, has recently been increasing his involvement, adding extra days to his schedule. He said because of the upcoming holiday season, there is more of a sense of urgency.
“There's no laissez-faire aspect of it, right?” he said. “We need to get this food ready, because people are going to need it and it's certainly all disappearing.”
But Boria-Meyer emphasized the increased demand for fresh food doesn't stop after the holidays.
“Of course folks are gathering during the holidays, and for that reason more cooking is being planned and there's an increased need for food,” she wrote. “This being said, food insecurity is a year-round issue, not just one that is concentrated during the holidays.”
Power guided members of Bigger Table as they pruned a citrus tree, demonstrating proper technique while volunteers followed along.
He added how the garden provides a locally positive outlet in an often anxiety-inducing world. “It crosses all political lines...It crosses all diversity racial lines. It's just for everybody. It's kindness, and the people who come here are kind, and that's great to see.”
The growing season is a long one, lasting about 9-10 months. ”We do get frost here, so we have to obviously be mindful of that. But it's never so detrimental that we can't grow,” Boria-Meyer said. “It might just cause a little damage, but we keep moving.”
Boria-Meyer referred north central Florida to a Goldilocks zone. While hurricanes are very problematic, she is grateful the weather is not high on her concern list, she said.
A typical week includes a walk-up day every Monday, when people can come collect fresh food, as well as CSA members picking up their paid vegetables, which provides the nonprofit with recurring revenue. There is a lot of back and forth rest of the week between making sure the farming happens, community networking happens and grants are written, Boria-Meyer said.
“Thursdays are the volunteer days, and our partners are coming at periodic points throughout the week, and then also on the weekends as well to come and pick up the food from our refrigerators,” she said.
Looking ahead, the garden hopes to expand into additional space to create a larger food campus. Plans include combining growing, learning and food access in one place with educational programs, youth gardens and seed-saving initiatives.