Hamilton urban garden using MLK grant to feed the hungry

By Chris Riva | January 20, 2020 at 7:23 PM EST – Updated January 21 at 12:29 PM

BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio (FOX19) – A group of 40 volunteers spent the weekend in Hamilton winterizing a community garden–cleaning its raised boxes, tending to its berry beds and trimming its trees and shrubs.


This Hamilton group does urban gardening to help those in need. Here’s how it’s growing.

LOCAL NEWS April 23, 2019

By Mike Rutledge, Staff Writer


Hamilton-grown tomatoes all year? This new greenhouse is making it happen

LOCAL NEWS Sept 06, 2018

By Mike Rutledge, Staff Writer


09/01/2016 – “On a recent summer afternoon, Patty Burbacher, a small, light-haired woman, gave a tour of the two-acre lot in Hamilton, Ohio, filled with raised beds brimming with hot peppers, herbs, tomatoes, and a variety of other produce. Corn grew in tall rows, and squash vines mounded up. Burbacher showed off some handsome ripening eggplants.”


7/22/2016 – “The high humidity sent the heat index to 94 and things were not going to get any cooler for the weekend. Water was a welcome sight on the hot summer day, especially if people were tending to a garden. Volunteers with the Hamilton Urban Garden System braved the heat and humidity to grow food for this urban neighborhood.”


04/23/2015 – “Alfred Hall, executive director for nonprofit Hamilton Urban Garden Systems, will receive the Volunteer Of the Year Award at a dinner and ceremony April 28, according to Hamilton’s volunteer coordinator Karen Wittmer.”


03/29/2015 – “If you talk to Alfred Hall, he’ll tell you that there’s a food revolution happening in Hamilton.”


01/04/2015 – “Thanks to a partnership between nonprofit Hamilton Urban Garden Systems (HUGS) and Butler Metro Housing Authority (BMHA), who runs the low-income apartment complex at 122 N. Sixth St., a long-empty greenhouse at the complex is now harvesting fresh, organically grown lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and spinach among other produce.”


10/23/2014 – “Everyone should have access to nutritional and gardening information, fresh produce and the opportunity to grow their own food. That’s behind why Alfred Hall and Patty Burbacher, at the time an integrative studies senior at Miami University, co-founded Hamilton Urban Garden Systems (HUGS) three years ago.”