Spring 2026 at The Common|Wealth
Spring 2026 at The Common|Wealth was marked by intentional preparation, physical rebirth, and early cultivation across the campus. Long before our peak summer season began, the campus buzzed with quiet, deliberate labor—from indoor seed propagation and hoop house turnover to installing new beehives on The Prairie. Spring served as the essential foundation for the abundance to follow, bringing together neighbors, youth, educators, and global partners to prepare the soil, plant perennial bulbs, and activate the land for a season of shared growth.
Seeds, Seedlings, and Farm Prep
Spring began with hands in the soil and thousands of seeds carefully sown. The SWF team and Neighborhood Academy began by seeding core crop staples (collards, kale, mustard greens, turnips, Swiss chard) alongside early seasonal cold crops (lettuce, spinach, arugula, broccoli). As spring progressed and days warmed, attention shifted to starting summer hot crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, cucumbers) alongside a wide variety of native flowers and medicinal herbs—first sowing them indoors before transplanting them to the Healing Garden Tea House and Hoop Houses.
In tandem with plant cultivation, the Communiversity campus underwent intensive seasonal preparation. The SWF team and Neighborhood Academy worked across the land, laying fresh woodchip paths, turning and amending soil with compost, marking and staking rows, and carefully clearing mature winter growth from the hoop houses to make way for incoming crops. This rigorous physical labor laid the groundwork for harvests that would sustain the community through summer and fall.\ —culminating on May 8 (the Friday before Mother’s Day) with the Annual Seedling Market, which officially kicked off the weekly Friday Neighborhood Markets that continued through October.
Neighborhood Academy & Cross-City Connections
The Neighborhood Academy (NA) launched its 2026 season in early February, bringing together a vibrant mix of returning core anchors, new community members, and incoming RND Re-Search Interns. Engagement was rooted in hands-on agroecological labor paired with applied learning via the Communiversity’s Plant Study at the Intersection of Agroecology, Botany, and Horticulture lessons, derived from a larger Communiversity course. In a special "preview" of the summer rhythm, NA participants enjoyed weekly farm-to-table meals—from curried lentils with mixed spring greens to spring onion pancakes and vegan Caesar salad—harvested directly from the hoop houses starting the first week of April, two full months before SWF’s peak public summer season.
Concurrently, SWF expanded its cooperative extension model by hosting weekly Cross-City Virtual Calls every Wednesday. Connecting Neighborhood Academy participants with Values-Based Partners across Jamaica, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Detroit, these weekly mini-lessons aligned digital botany instruction (Propagation 101, Transplanting, Meristem Development) directly with that week's physical labor on the land.
Bees on The Prairie: Expanding the Apiary
Spring 2026 marked a new chapter for SWF’s ongoing apiary endeavors with the installation of two new beehives on The Prairie, bringing renewed life to campus pollinators. One of the newly established hives was specifically designed as an educational learning hive, featuring viewports that allow youth, students, and community members to observe hive dynamics and honeycomb construction without disturbing the colony.
SWF Neighborhood Academy Fellow Jessica Letcher led efforts to get the hives up and running and carefully stewarded them across the seasons. Setting up and caring for spring apiaries requires meticulous stewardship—from monitoring queen establishment and inspecting frame wax to ensuring early nectar sources are thriving. The expanded apiary strengthens The Prairie’s ecosystem while providing an interactive learning environment that will be integrated into Neighborhood Academy and Communiversity programming for years to come.
Seeding the Future: Field Lessons & Tulips
In April, the 2025–2026 Seeding the Future (STF) program with Beasley Academic Center continued as students visited The Common|Wealth for interactive Field Lessons, rotating between hands-on learning stations across campus. At the Work-Shop, students explored flower anatomy and the mechanics of pollination. At The Prairie station, students learned about the urban nature reserve as a vital refuge for pollinators—engaging in an interactive lesson on the distinct roles, anatomy, and populations of queen, worker, and drone bees. Students then interacted directly with the newly installed educational learning hive, peering through viewports to observe these hive dynamics and honeycomb construction firsthand.
Students regrouped in the Community Garden before taking a walking tour down Lafayette Avenue to witness more than a thousand vibrant tulips in full bloom. Among the bursting display in SWF’s Pocket Park were hundreds of tulips planted by these very same Beasley students during their fall visit in October 2025. Representing the third consecutive year of students planting perennial bulbs alongside SWF team members and neighbors, the floral display offered a striking visual testament to the power of multi-year community stewardship and the cyclical nature of perennial plant life.
The field lesson concluded inside the Civic Arts Church, where students created botanical art using natural pigments derived from dandelions, violets, and mugwort—leaving with personalized creations that celebrated the colors and species growing right in their own neighborhood.
Spring Catalyst Events
Spring 2026 also featured two major catalyst events that set the intellectual and creative tone for the entire year. On May 4, SWF hosted the World Water Film Festival inside the Civic Arts Church, screening international films centered on water justice—including SWF RND Re-Search intern Mohamed Salem's A Garden in the Desert—paired with campus tours highlighting SWF’s bio-swales and sustainable water infrastructure. Just nine days later, on May 13, SWF convened the landmark "We the Publics…" Civic Arts Talk with Dr. Imani Perry, Dr. Reuben Jonathan Miller, and Omo Moses, sparking a profound dialogue on public space, collective memory, and spatial justice.
Looking Ahead to Summer
The physical labor, educational exchanges, and creative momentum built throughout the spring laid the groundwork for an unforgettable summer at The Common|Wealth. As the seedlings matured into bountiful farm rows and the catalyst talks transformed into weekly community rituals, Spring 2026 seamlessly blossomed into a season of unprecedented abundance.