Tyrone Cherry III

After a rash of police brutality cases a few years ago, Tyrone Cherry III said he was especially affected by Mike Brown’s death. Cherry, who has two decades under his belt as an educator and was teaching at Peabody Middle at the time, said “Hands up, don’t shoot” didn’t resonate with him and after talking to his male students, they came up with “RaiseGrades4MikeBrown” instead. 

That led to a male mentorship program (he took them on college tours and to cultural restaurants in an effort to make sure they were raising grades and awareness) and eventually the group grew into trying to address issues and applying solutions in Petersburg, which then led to him finding out Petersburg was a food desert. 

Cherry said he attended a conference in Seattle that talked about food deserts and community gardens, and as a biology major and former science teacher, he had never heard of that. Once he returned to Petersburg, he took his students to the library, showed them the TED Talk and the first community garden was built.

His student’s grandfather, Papa Kelly, was a farmer from Louisiana who grew up farming and started the garden with them in one day. Cherry said they built about 25 raised garden beds in his front yard and they have been growing from there.

“We found the problem – we live in a food desert – and then we were able to identify at least one solution – that was community gardening,” Cherry said, “so we turned my front yard … into our first community garden.” 

Though Papa Kelly wasn’t there to see the first harvest, Cherry said every garden they start they have him in mind as that is his legacy.  After building small gardens at a local boys and girls club and a daycare, that attention led to a bigger garden with 50 raised beds (Dunlop Street Community Garden) and Cherry is currently trying to acquire a 5.2-acre piece of land, which he hopes to call the Petersburg Oasis CommUNITY Farm. 

Cherry is currently the project assistant of the farmers market and co-coordinator of the Power of Produce hub through the Petersburg Healthy Opportunities. He founded Petersburg League of Urban Growers (PLUG), which has been in existence for six years, and he said the brand existed before the organization and they grew into it. Before urban agriculture, Cherry managed local rappers whose music had to come from the heart and be positive (he called them heartists), which got him in with the youth.

“As I started shifting and saying ‘Yeah, music is the way to get the message out but not everybody’s tuning into the music, what’s another way’, and then gardening became that thing. In that mix, I lost my mother too … and I just got into gardening and that became my therapy, Cherry said. “It’s not just about the food access and the food security, it’s about environmental stewardship, it’s about generating that energy, it’s about reconnecting and connecting. It’s therapeutic to me and I know that that can benefit a lot of people.” 

Cherry also honored his mother by starting a free library, the first of which he put right in front of the community garden and another idea he got from his conference in Seattle. After receiving a good response, Cherry put another in front of Pleasants Lane elementary (his kids were attending at the time and his son wanted one there). Cherry didn’t have the funds so he crowdfunded for more; however he read an article about a girl and her father who’d been turning newsstands into free libraries, and a week later after moving and receiving old boxes from the Progress Index, Cherry got local artists to paint the boxes and started putting them up around the city. He called them the Food for Thought Free Libraries. 

“So another example to Petersburg, like even if we can’t afford the little free libraries … [just] showing them like that’s cool, we can repurpose things, we can upcycle things,” Cherry said, “we can turn trash into treasure for us so we’re not gonna stop, just because we can’t afford those libraries doesn’t mean we’re not gonna give free literature out, and so far it’s been growing well.”

Cherry said he’s always running into his former students who still call him Mr. Cherry and he said if his students see him growing, it’s a reminder to them that we’re all growing. The initial group of gardeners are in their 20s now (the garden was reclaimed and turned into a natural garden known as Petersburg Oasis Garden) and Papa Kelly’s grandson is still in contact with him. After the Mike Brown group, Cherry started a unisex youth environment social club called PLUG ESC where they met up weekly to identify challenges in the community and implementing solutions; some of those students are still working with them, one of whom helped with the Dunlop Garden.

Cherry is trained in Learn, Grow, Eat & GO! (a 10-week program that teaches gardening, nutrition, how to prepare healthy snacks and the importance of exercise, and students are certified as junior master gardeners at end of program) and he said he would love to go to the schools or local churches with small groups of kids to apply that program so they can have a whole swarm of junior master gardeners in Petersburg.

Cherry believes he’s made a positive impact and he feels he represents and is a reflection of Petersburg. He currently homeschools his four children who he said loves gardening. They have their own garden and business, A Tea Stand for Legoland, and they sell $5 at the farmers market to be able to afford the trip.

“That sparked something too, like we can do this with a whole lotta other kids, we can have them take whatever they love growing and whatever excess they have they can sell at the market,” Cherry said, “and now they can generate some income so we can take them from the farmers market to the stock market, now we can incorporate financial literacy into this thing, which is a big deal.”

Follow Tyrone here: Tyrone Power Cherry, Mr. Cherry’s Neighborhood, The PLUG LLC, POP Podcast, and also donate to Support the Central Virginia Agrarian Commons Urban Farm Acquisition.