In East Point, the ArtsXchange Southeast Community Cultural Center is getting a green facelift. Thanks to a partnership with Shades of Green Permaculture, the quarter acre of land in front of the ArtsXchange building will soon be home to a regenerative community greenspace for artists.
Penned as “more than just a landscape project” in a press release, this effort will not only support and uplift artists and community members who frequent the cultural center, it will also hopefully inspire similar projects undertaken by other organizations.
During the pandemic, the barren land was useful for performances, concerts, and other activations. In 2023, ArtsXchange removed all the grass and big bushes that were threatening the foundation and crowding the front wall of their building. The land has since sat empty, waiting for new life. And now, thanks to the efforts and wisdom of the team at Shades of Green Permaculture, it will soon spring back to life.
I recently sat down with Alice Lovelace, Founder of ArtsXchange and Brandy Hall, Founder and CEO of Shades of Green Permaculture, to discuss the project.
“Beauty in a community shows how much you value the community,” said Lovelace. “To create something beautiful not just for our neighbors but for anyone who encounters it, it becomes a place of peace and contemplation.”
In 2023, Charity Hamidullah was brought in to create a new mural along the front facade of the building. “Community of Cultivation” is a colorful and vibrant work that visually tells the story of plants from seed to harvest. The mural will soon be complemented by a lush garden, thanks to Shades of Green Permaculture.
“We want all of our land to be useful; to produce more than grass,” said Lovelace as we sat across from one another at a table in the Shades of Green headquarters. Citing the steep decline in bug and insect population, she said that it is part of their plan to surround ArtsXchange with medicinal and edible greenery. The completed garden will not only generate useful plants, but also allow for classes to take place outside, and hopefully inspire artists and community members to consider their place within a thriving ecosystem.
“Our work is not just about stewarding the landscapes and letting them flourish in their time, but also about guiding the stewards, getting people engaged, and helping them to slow down and notice nature around them,” said Hall.
Slow and steady growth
In real life, planting and gardening is not like what you might be used to seeing on television. Without the use of sped up timelapses and artful montages popularized on home and garden programs, gardening is actually relatively slow work. Long before the soil is ready for planting, the soil must be tilled, fertilized, and prepared for seeds to take root.
Gardens need tending, maintenance, and love. It takes a concerted effort to not only establish a garden but also keep it healthy enough to produce fruit, flowers, and food. Sustainable gardening is truly a community effort; and luckily at ArtsXchange, there’s no shortage of community members who will take the charge to support a sustainable and productive landscape.
“It’s not a surprise, but it has been very gratifying to see that a large number of our volunteers also come to our community garden,” said Lovelace. There have been three work days so far, enlisting a number of community members who have dedicated their time and efforts to tending the roughly quarter acre of land.
Another key element of sustainable permaculture is the use and incorporation of rainwater systems.
“It goes back to the idea of maintenance as love,” said Hall. In a world where we are increasingly disconnected from the cycles of life, the Shades of Green team explores what it would be like to live in a closed loop, where all refuse, waste, and water stays within a system and enriches it, rather than being flushed away.
“Permaculture is really about integrating human activities into the ecosystem that we inhabit,” said Hall.
For years, rainwater pouring off the roof of the ArtsXchange was causing damage to the structure. Over time the flow of water cut away at the soil surrounding the building and even the foundation itself.
In a permaculture model, it’s not as simple as rerouting the rain away from the building and into the gutter – it’s important to capitalize on the water and use it for the land and its plants. This is achieved through rain gardens that help to disperse the water into the soil. Additional rainwater collection via 300 gallon tanks is planned for the ArtsXchange property, which will be used to water the vegetable garden and orchards.
Hall called incorporating rainwater into a garden’s plan as “dancing with it through the land.”
We discussed why it is important to work with rather than fight against rainwater, especially considering that water can wear away any man made structure, and even cut through rock over time. “Municipalities and developers are catching on, if you deal with it higher up in the watershed on their own property it’s a lot less costly than trying to deal with it when it’s at the bottom.”
Lovelace agrees with this sentiment, and highlighted that there are added benefits to incorporating a natural water system into a garden’s plan. “I don’t think people understand the importance of using that rainwater,” said Lovelace, noting the adverse effects of using chlorinated tap water for gardens, lawns, and the microbiome of the soil.
“I would call it a living environment – everything in it is either alive or contributes to keeping us alive,” Lovelace continued. “What does art mimic? Art mimics nature.”
Lovelace and her team at the ArtsXchange are working to construct a holistic ecology of plants surrounding the building, and explained that the benefits to artists goes beyond growing edible and medicinal, useful plants. “[It’s] a natural way of inspiring not only the arts but also those who come to enjoy the arts, and to understand where art actually comes from. Art itself derives from nature.”
As we spoke, I found myself curious as to what has inspired Lovelace to embark on this ambitious greenspace plan. She told me that it all goes back to her childhood.
Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, Lovelace spent much of her youth enjoying the robust Forest Park in her neighborhood. “It was an awakening for me to find out that people did not grow up the way I grew up,” Lovelace explained. She had access to a sprawling, robust city park that incorporated natural beauty with the needs of a thriving community.
For example, there was a community center across the street from her house where she grew up with her working class family. Lovelace took many classes there, including all forms of dance from ballet to tap and samba, learned how to sew, crochet, and weave rugs on a Peruvian loom. She took tumbling classes, boxing, acting lessons, carpentry, and more.
“I thought everybody had these things, so my concept of art and culture was very very wide,” she said. Growing up, she started training in her family’s kitchen when she was only 8 years old and she credits that experience as instrumental in her love for the art of cooking and food preparation. As an adult and an arts leader in a major Southern metro, Lovelace noticed a lack of this connection with art, culture, community, and nature.
“That’s why we built the ArtsXchange– it has always been about how we recreate the things we know and love about art and culture, and how they feed not just artists but anyone who comes into contact with it.”
This project is almost entirely community funded, with a GoFundMe seeking $85,000 in donations to complete this ambitious greenspace plan. The rest of the projected cost, coming in at over $20,000, is from the Shades of Green Community Giveback Program. While the ArtsXchange’s land use project is larger than most, it is only one of a series of efforts by Shades of Green that are designed to provide pro bono support to support greenspace development at other similar organizations across the city.
“A lot of times, people think I only have a little land and a little money, but there are solutions there, too,” said Lovelace, who hopes that other organizations and individuals are inspired to develop their own holistic garden practice, regardless of limitations to their available space or resources.
“Grow something! Just grow something,” exclaimed Lovelace, eliciting a chorus of laughter from the room.
“One key component of this is that we are really trying to push home the idea that this is not just about one landscape, and one garden, but that this is a replicable model,” Hall explained. If organizations like ArtsXchange can commit to enriching the local ecology through greenspace projects such as this, Hall hopes that it will inspire more to take up the charge and improve conditions for communities and their ecosystems far and wide.
The ArtsXchange greenspace project started with a design phase back in summer of 2024. The first volunteer work days took place over the winter, during which community members removed grass and landscape fabric, tilled the soil, turned wood chips, planted cover crops, and spread compost.
Next up is a tomato plant bucket giveaway on April 19, the water system installation is slated for mid-April, and on April 26 volunteers will plant fruit trees, herbs, berries, perennials, and cut flowers on the land.
