Urban Garden's Founder Fast Becoming the Go-To Guru

She’s a part-time graphics designer who had a way with sick plants, but Robin Milcowitz knew next to nothing about growing beans, tomatoes and cucumbers when she got some neighbors together to create one of Tampa’s first urban community gardens.

The 40-year-old mother of two – 9-year-old Cash and 7-year-old Edison – has been learning ever since. And along with vegetables in , she’s growing big dreams.

“This community garden has helped me understand what’s going on in the city,” says Milcowitz, a woman with a ready laugh and one gardening shoe held together with duct tape. “I realized there’s a much bigger job here. (In Tampa) there’s literally nothing -- no urban farms, no local food sources. Only 1.7 percent of the land (in city limits) is zoned for agriculture.

“I want to get a network going to create a local food system. I want to start a coalition to support people who don’t have the money or the land, but want access to affordable, healthy food.”

It started simply enough. Milcowitz heard Tampa City Council member Mary Mulhern talk about helping East Tampa get a community garden started back in 2008.

“One of the council members said, ‘Nobody’s interested in a community garden,’ ” she recalls. “I couldn’t believe that. So I went to some of my neighbors and asked them, ‘Are you interested in starting a community garden?’ They all said, ‘Yes!’ ”

Milcowitz and her neighbors live in the Evelyn City area of the Heights, north and east of Sligh and Nebraska avenues. She and her husband, Tripp Williams (she kept her maiden name because “love him, but I just could not be Robin Williams”), moved into their 1925 bungalow 10 years ago, coming from an apartment in Hyde Park.

Knowing she could count on neighborhood support, Milcowitz set about attending workshops and meetings organized by Mulhern, a champion of the urban garden movement. At one of those meetings, she met Seminole Heights resident Linda Ketley, who offered up the loan of her vacant double lot at 407 W. Violet St.  Not long afterward, in June 2009, Seminole Heights Community Garden became the first in Tampa born of a national ground-swell of interest in grow-your-own organic foods.

Milcowitz wants the garden to be a classroom of sorts, a place where people learn to grow their own healthy food.

“Mostly, organic stores are far away,” she says. “Our goal is to teach people how to do it at home. It’s something most people don’t want to learn from a book.”

Her efforts earned her a nomination from Mulhern in 2009 for Hillsborough County’s Lonnie Lea Napier Good Neighbor Award, which recognizes “those good neighbors who help simply because help is needed.” Thanks in part to her work, the city council voted in May to change the permitting process for these, slashing the $2,000-plus fee to about $200. And Milcowitz has become a valuable resource for communities throughout the Tampa Bay area, speaking on sustainable-living topics and consulting with other start-up gardens.

She got it all started, but a cadre of diehard helpers make it work, she says. Piet Vanderhorst organized four community gardens in California and serves as evangelical mentor here. He and Tammy Harman, Kevin Siebel, Cindy Hickey, Krystal Schofield and Annalisa Khaw all pitch in regularly with hard labor, watering, and whatever else needs doing.

Hickey says Milcowitz keeps everyone going.

“She gently reminds us, sends emails. She keeps us interested,” Hickey says. “She’s the ultimate multi-tasker.  I can’t even imagine doing that with two young children!”

Enter Milcowitz’ husband, a computer programming analyst, pitches in. Although not with the plants. He becomes Super Dad at home when Mom heads out for yet another meeting or workday in the garden.

“I’ve asked him if he minds and he says no,” she says. “He knows it’s my passion.”

She puts in 8 to 10 hours a week in the veggie beds; more during harvest times. She also organizes activities, such as cooking classes that incorporate the produce people may not be used to, like kale. And she raises money -- a 500-gallon cistern and solar pump will be delivered soon.

“She’s very unselfish,” Hickey says.  “She sticks with the things she cares about.”

Milcowitz says she’s “the obnoxious one” – the neighbor who’s maybe a bit too howdy and in-your-face.

Hickey says that’s not the true.

“Persistent, which is a good thing,” she says. “Definitely not obnoxious.”

Garden memberships cost $25 a year to help tend a communal plot; $35 a year for a personal plot. Water, good dirt, and lots of help are included.

Contact Robin Milcowitz at 813-298-5518 or robin@greenerpixels.com for more information.