In 2024, CPI received a generous grant award from the City of Cincinnati's Boots on the Ground program and set about growing and nurturing ten “Food Champions" around the west side of the city. This year, we are inviting our Food Champs to share their stories. In this article we’d like to introduce you to Mary Dudley.
Mary is a pivotal person in the CPI Food Champions stories. Her tireless efforts weaving community through gardening has brought more connections than we can count. She tells her own story below…
Mary on the back porch of her Westwood home near Mt Airy Forest
I am a seeds & soil kinda gal.
I find my fondest moments are those when I am filled to the brim with excitement as I prepare soil for a new garden bed, stirring the black compost with soft brown peat. Since my daily schedule is unpredictable, the time to fill and seed these freshly churned beds occasionally falls under a shining moon and I go to bed soil streaked and hoping for a gentle rain to awaken the sleeping seeds. Once the seeds germinate and put on new growth, I nurture them with trellising structures compiled from unused items pieced together with love and twine. My passion is for the resilience of the plants who boldly root themselves and make life blossom in the face of rain, wind, drought and heat, fending off pressures from herbivores along the way. I love sharing my plant fascination with others and working together to protect the fertile spaces of our community for many generations to come.
My current volunteer work through the nonprofit Westwood Grows (started in 2022 in an effort to support public gardens in the Westwood neighborhood of Cincinnati) focuses on celebrating neighbors who plant native gardens, cultivating community through seed and plant swaps, and empowering those who sustain existing food forest installations in the community with tools and education.
While a bountiful harvest of fresh produce is desired, the real value lies in the daily interactions I have with neighbors turned friends in the form of compost conversations, texts with fuzzy pictures and questions of identification, smiles shared from snacking in the garden, and friendly honks from drivers who wave their gratitude as we pull up weeds along the road. It is through these relationships I am the most nourished.
To learn more about Westwood Grows and meet the team, visit our website: www.westwoodgrows.org and check out our upcoming events including plant swaps at the Westwood Farmers Market and the Westwood Native Garden Walking Tour hosted in collaboration with Seeding Community.
Growing together,
Mary Dudley, she/her
Botanist, Educator, Nurturer
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