City Blossoms Harvest Campaign

Our goal is to raise $60,000 by the end of the year. Between now and Giving Tuesday, donations up to $10,000 will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the John G. and Jean R. Gosnell Foundation. This will enable us to create new green spaces, strengthen our partnerships, and provide greater support for children, youth, and communities across DC. With your help, we can continue our mission of ensuring that all children, regardless of where they live, have access to healthy food, safe green space, and abundant opportunities to become agents of change in their own environment.

Our impact is rooted in partnership and collaboration. Since our founding over 16 years ago, City Blossoms has relied on strategic partnerships with local groups and organizations to help amplify our impact across communities in DC and beyond. Our journey began with an experimental garden at CentroNía in Columbia Heights, creating a space that both enriched CentroNía’s youth programs and seamlessly connected City Blossoms with the surrounding community. At the heart of our programming and green spaces, we remain dedicated to collaboration and power-sharing with our communities throughout DC to expand our impact. Throughout 2024, our partnerships have continued to enhance our programs and deepen our support for children, youth, and families:

• Thanks to our incredible collaboration with Capital Area Food Bank and Zion Baptist Church, we were able to distribute over 25,000 pounds of fresh produce to local educators, families, and community members in DC.

• This year, we partnered with the United States Botanic Garden (USBG) to create an outdoor exhibit that attracted nearly 400,000 visitors.

• Our partnership with the USBG has opened doors to strengthen our regional garden-based learning network and highlight inspiring community work in the DMV–In 2025, we will co-host the second Regional Garden-based Learning Summit, bringing together over 40 organizations for two days of connection and growth.

These milestones showcase the power of partnership and collaboration to expand our reach and enrich our programs, creating more opportunities for transformative experiences in nature for the children, youth, and families in our DC community.

See images below from our produce distribution activities, our outdoor garden exhibit at the USBG, and our 2023 Regional Garden-based Learning Summit!

Thanks to your incredible support during last year’s Harvest Campaign, in 2024 we successfully created five new kid-driven gardens in partnership with early childhood centers, middle schools, and neighborhoods in DC who otherwise would not have access to safe green space. These new green spaces are now enriching the lives of over 1,000 children and youth every year, expanding our existing network of 33 active garden collaborations. This growing network, known as our Pathways Model, features our six age-specific programs and is designed to provide consistent, sustained access to local green space, environmental education, and nature-based activities—proven to positively impact the holistic health of children, youth, and their communities.

See images below from the garden build this past spring with our new partners, Eliot-Hine Middle School.

This fall, the City Blossoms team has been hard at work identifying our next cohort of school and community partners. We’re thrilled to welcome three new school communities—MacFarland Middle School, Jefferson Middle School Academy, and Johnson Middle School—where we’ll build lush new kid-driven gardens that will serve as vibrant hubs for environmental learning, fresh food, and community-building. And in 2025, we look forward to expanding our reach even further by welcoming several early childhood centers into this cohort through our partnership with United Planning Organization (UPO).

With your support, we can make this happen! By contributing to the 2025 Harvest Campaign, you will help us onboard these new partners, impacting an additional 1,300+ children, youth, educators, and families. Together, we can cultivate safe, accessible green spaces and healthier, more connected communities across DC.

Let’s grow together—will you join us?