We are working with Shortridge High School and the Shortridge High School Alumni Association to make improvements to the school to improve its urban environment and environmental education opportunities. With the generous help of volunteers and a grant to the school through Butler University’s […]
Inspiring urban neighborhoods is a family affair By Erika D. Smith “It really started with this picture of my grandfather.” Justin Moore fished around in the pocket of his suit jacket for his smartphone. He tapped the screen a few times, and found a black and white photo of a distinguished-looking, balding black man. The […]
Urban Patch and our new Indy Redbud Project were selected along with Growing Places Indy as a “Crowd Favorite” runner-up for Formstack’s “Build Indy” grant competition. We were chosen from the ten Build Indy finalists and were selected via a live vote to split all of the money from the “Celebrate the City” ticket sales and […]
We get a lot of questions about our name, the Urban Patch. We like to think it’s pretty cool and ‘catchy.’ But it does also have a serious meaning for our work, which is also inspired by our roots in urban community development. One of the project’s founders, Justin Moore, is an urban designer and […]
The Indy Redbud Project is a community identity + environment proposal. We will start by taking a vacant lot (or lots) in the Mapleton Fall Creek area and planting a grove of native redbud trees. Over time we would engage a number of partners from neighborhood associations and development corporations to individual homeowners and environmental […]
Urban Patch has helped to start the Saint Nicholas Miracle Garden in Harlem. During Earth Week the group of community members received their approval to turn a vacant city-owned lot into one of the city’s newest Green Thumb sites, and had their first work day cleaning up the garden. The site is small (like everything in […]
We were recently awarded a grant from the Fall Creek Watershed Partnership’s cost share program to do native plantings and permeable paving at our Park Garden site. Thanks to goes to Leslie White and the Marion County Soil & Water Conservation District for their help!
Urban Patch has been working with community members and 596 Acres to create a new community garden in Central Harlem in New York City. The garden is currently a vacant city-owned site, but new garden member Vaughn Wallace found some research that the site was a garden over fifty years ago and was, in fact, the […]
Urban Patch was honored for our work creating new urban rain gardens in the Fall Creek Watershed at the Delaware Project and Fall Creek Gardens in Mapleton – Fall Creek. Fall Creek Watershed Backyard Conservation Program Video:
Every year, ioby awards the Heroes In Our Backyards awards to those ioby project leaders that exemplify the ioby spirit of community activism. ioby Heroes In Our Backyards are hyper-local, community-based, entrepreneurial and tireless. In 2012, we awarded three groups with this award around the key tool for revitalizing urban centers: reimagining vacant space. The […]
