(Photo courtesy Planting Hope)
The Good Page features positive LGBTQ+ news in Central Florida and Tampa Bay, uplifting and inspiring stories highlighting locals in our community. Here, we learn about Central Florida’s Planting Hope.
At Planting Hope, community care begins with something simple: getting your hands in the soil, sharing a meal and making room for one another.
The free gardening initiative, a collaboration between Peer Support Space and Blue Trunk Community Network, brings Central Florida residents together to connect with nature, learn sustainable gardening practices and find comfort in community.
The partnership began in 2019, when Peer Support Space founders Dandelion Hill and Eva Fajardo met Blue Trunk founders Itiba Contreras and Lord Maji during a community volunteer day. A shared belief in the healing power of nature and collective care inspired them to create Planting Hope.
“We believe that there’s incredible healing power in pouring intentional care into the land and one another,” Hill says.
For Blue Trunk, the initiative builds on years of work centered on food sovereignty, environmental sustainability and cultural empowerment. Founded in response to the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the organization has cultivated community gardens, food exchanges and mutual aid programs that connect people with resources while honoring ancestral traditions.
Together, the organizations have created gatherings where participants don’t need gardening experience or even the desire to garden. Simply showing up is enough.
“We believe that everyone carries wisdom within them,” Hill says. “Everyone has within them both the capacity to be a teacher and a student here.”
Food and conversation close each gathering, allowing participants to replenish themselves after tending to the land.
“Breaking ground and breaking bread are at the core of each gathering,” Hill says.
One of Planting Hope’s garden spaces is located at Eva’s Casita, a queer and trans sanctuary named after the late Eva Fajardo. A lifelong gardener, Fajardo believed in the ancestral wisdom found in nature, a legacy that continues through the initiative.
For Hill, gardening offers an opportunity to slow down and reconnect with the natural world.
That sense of grounding extends to the people who gather. Whether someone arrives feeling joyful, anxious or overwhelmed, Planting Hope welcomes them without expectations.
Participants can work alongside others, strike up conversations or simply enjoy being present in silence. Each way of participating is equally valued.
Hill experienced the importance of that freedom personally during a particularly difficult period.
At a new community garden space on Holden Avenue in Orlando, Hill joined three fellow trans community members for a lakeside picnic surrounded by wildflowers. At the time, Hill was struggling with personal challenges and the emotional weight of caring deeply about a world where so many people were suffering.
But sitting together on the land, sharing jokes, talking openly and imagining what the space could become, something shifted. For a moment, Hill found relief from the heaviness they had been carrying.
“In these micro yet emotionally macro moments I’m reminded of how far we’ve come and what is possible over time,” Hill reflects.
The experience echoed the connection that first brought the organizations together in 2019. It also reminded Hill that even those who spend their lives caring for others need places where they can be cared for, too.
Now, that Holden Avenue space is beginning its own transformation. Newly planted banana trees are growing, and the organizations are gradually cultivating a community food forest intended to provide nourishment and connection.
It’s part of a broader vision to develop more accessible food forests while responding to food insecurity in Central Florida.
Planting Hope holds gatherings at least seasonally, with additional events depending on community needs.
Information is available on Instagram through @EvasCasita, @PeerSupportSpace and @BlueTrunkCommunityNetwork, or by emailing Dandelion@peersupportspace.org.
Community members can also support the initiative through Venmo or PayPal donations to PeerSupportSpace, specifying “Planting Hope.”
Interested in being featured in The Good Page? Email Editor-in-Chief Ryan Williams-Jent at Ryan@WatermarkOutNews.com in Tampa Bay or Central Florida Bureau Chief Bellanee Plaza at Bellanee@WatermarkOutNews.com in Central Florida.
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