Harvest Farm at White Street Park: Growing a Healthier Suwanee
How a city-led community garden brought food, education, and shared stewardship into the heart of Suwanee.
Location: Suwanee, Georgia
Client: City of Suwanee
Project Partners: SEI
Project Type: Municipal Community Garden / Public Park
Project Scale: Nearly seven-acre White Street Park (garden occupies a portion of the park)
Project Opening: 2010
Services: Community Engagement · Community Garden Visioning & Master Planning · Agricultural Site Planning
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Harvest Farm at White Street Park is a city-led organic community garden and educational gathering place in Suwanee’s Old Town Historic District.
Opened in 2010, the garden brought food growing into the city’s public park system, creating a place where residents could cultivate their own plots, share knowledge, and build relationships across generations. The City of Suwanee continues to describe Harvest Farm as a resource for gardening, organic living, and sustainability education.
Farmer D Consulting collaborated with B+C Studio and the City of Suwanee on the community garden master plan, agricultural site planning, and a public engagement process to help bring the city’s vision into focus.
THE VISION
The vision was to transform public open space into a living place for food, health, learning, and community connection.
Through its “Growing a Healthier Suwanee” mission, the city envisioned a garden where neighbors could participate directly in growing food and learn practical skills for caring for the land. The project connected agricultural activity with recreation and civic life rather than treating gardens as something separate from public space.
The garden also became part of a broader vision for White Street Park, where paths, gathering areas, and natural landscapes could welcome both gardeners and the wider community.
THE CHALLENGE
A successful public garden needs more than growing beds. It needs access, organization, programming, and lasting community commitment.
Planning a city-managed garden required translating residents’ interests into a practical site plan and shared resource. The design needed to provide workable growing spaces while fitting within a public park and supporting education, volunteer participation, and ongoing stewardship.
OUR APPROACH
Farmer D Consulting partnered with B+C Studio to shape the Suwanee Community Garden Master Plan and engage the community in the vision.
Our work focused on agricultural planning, garden layout, and the relationship between the productive garden and the park landscape. Community engagement helped connect the design to the residents and stakeholders who would ultimately use and care for the space.
The plan supported a public setting where individual gardeners could cultivate plots while sharing tools, knowledge, learning opportunities, and a common commitment to organic growing.
Original planning reference: Suwanee Community Garden master plan archive (drawing and credits to be reviewed before publication).
THE OUTCOME
Harvest Farm opened in 2010 and has endured as an active community gardening and learning resource.
The City of Suwanee’s current website describes Harvest Farm as Georgia’s largest organic community garden and identifies 128 raised beds, alongside educational classes and events. Earlier reporting documented an initial 76 plots in 2010, reflecting the garden’s history and changes in how its capacity has been described.
White Street Park also includes a barn, natural amphitheater, trails, and gathering spaces. In 2017, a separate public orchard project opened as a complement to the established garden, expanding opportunities for edible landscapes and outdoor play.
PROJECT IMPACT
Harvest Farm illustrates how municipal investment in agriculture can create an enduring public asset that connects residents with food, one another, and the landscape.
The City continues to offer garden plots and educational programming, while the broader park provides places to walk, gather, and enjoy nature. A city planning report also documented a garden waiting list in the years after opening, indicating sustained resident interest.
For Farmer D & Co, Harvest Farm shows how thoughtfully planned agricultural spaces can serve as both a valued community amenity and useful civic infrastructure—helping a city cultivate participation, healthy living, and long-term stewardship.
WHAT THIS PROJECT TEACHES
Start with community ownership. Planning works best when the future gardeners and neighbors help shape the vision.
Integrate agriculture into public life. Productive landscapes can enrich parks, gathering places, and everyday civic experiences.
Design for continued stewardship. Public gardens thrive through a combination of useful infrastructure, education, municipal support, and resident participation.
Sources: City of Suwanee — Harvest Farm; City of Suwanee — Parks; ASLA — Orchard at White Street Park; Farmer D project archive. Draft pending photo and master-plan review.
