Lettuce Rise Up
Urban teens launch hydrponic gardening enterprise

Author: Jonathan Tescher

If I asked you to close your eyes and think of inner-city teenagers selling bags of greens, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

That image is changing in Atlanta.

Through a hydroponics youth enterprise project the Teen Club at Brownwood Recreation Center in East Atlanta has started a business that is good both for the environment and the community. Hydroponics is the practice of growing plants in a solution of essential mineral nutrients rather than in soil.

In January 2006 Atlantis Hydroponics donated more than $800 worth of hydroponics equipment to the center and its staff contributed their time to teach the teens how to use it. “We’re empowering youth with skills for an emerging market – fresh, locally grown produce,” says Steve Sevener, co-founder and co-owner of Atlantis Hydroponics.

Arugula, a spicy salad green, took only four weeks to grow from seed so it was the first hydroponics harvest for the teens. The teens cut the leaves, placed them in labeled, zippered food storage bags and headed to the East Atlanta Village, the nearby business district, to sell their goods. The result was $80 in sales from the first two harvests. Now East Atlanta Thai has committed to purchase the harvest from the teens’ next crop: basil.

The Brownwood teens are giving back to the community, too. They used some of their earnings to prepare a breakfast for the recreation center’s senior club as part of 2006 National Youth Service Day in partnership with Hands On Atlanta. Alice Glass, Assistant Manager of Brownwood Recreation Center and facilitator for the senior club, said, “The seniors were touched by the gesture (and the good food) and plan to do something nice for the teens as a show of their appreciation.”

Positive economic, environmental, and social bottom lines for the teens’ hydroponics business is earning recognition in Georgia and nationwide. The Brownwood Teen Club was selected as a finalist for the Youth Environmental Symposium hosted by the Georgia Conservancy this year and the project was recently awarded “Most Transferable Best Practice” at the National Environmental Partnership Summit’s poster session category, Leading by Example: Environmental Improvement In Action.

“Local hydroponics is a win for the environment,” says Karimah Banks, a Brownwood Teen Club pioneer. “It uses 10 percent of the water that soil-based agriculture uses, and most food travels an average of 1,500 miles from farm to plate, burning petroleum fuels along the way. Hydroponic food production can be practiced indoors in urban areas with limited green space. The harvest is twice that of produce grown in soil, uses only half the space, and it can be practiced year-round!”

Growing more food locally in a big city like Atlanta will mean local economic development, job creation, and keeping more Georgia dollars in state.

In the coming year, the teens plan to learn how to grow other crops, engage more neighborhood teens in the project, and apply for a grant to set up and train a teen club hydroponics business in another of Atlanta’s Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs facilities.

The Brownwood Teen Club isn’t just growing food – it’s growing a future for the youth involved and for their community.

To learn more about this project, please contact Jonathan Tescher or Karimah Banks.


If your school or community youth group is interested pursuing a hydroponics project and is in need of equipment, check out the Hooked on Hydroponics Awards, a grant program of NGA sponsored by the Hydroponic Merchants Association that provides valuable awards in the form of hydroponic growing systems.