Growing Community: Beloved Community Garden Welcomes the 2026 Victory Garden Bus Tour
On August 2, the Beloved Community Garden opened its gates to fellow growers, neighbors, organizers, and community members as a stop on Tandi Family Farms’ 2026 Victory Garden Bus Tour.
The annual tour brought people together to experience urban growing spaces across Oakland and San Leandro, learn from local growers, and celebrate the work happening across the region to strengthen local food systems and build more connected communities.
For Beloved Communities Network, the visit was also an opportunity to share what has taken root at the 47th Avenue garden, and the larger vision continuing to grow around it.
From an Underused Yard to a Community Food Hub
The Beloved Community Garden began with a simple but powerful idea: transform an underused front and backyard into a place where neighbors could grow food together, build relationships, share resources, and strengthen their ability to care for one another.
Since February, more than 50 volunteers have helped bring that vision to life.
Together, volunteers and community members have built and planted raised beds and in-ground growing areas, planted fruit trees, established irrigation, created spaces for gathering, and helped tend a garden that has already harvested and distributed more than 800 pounds of fresh produce.
But the long-term vision extends beyond creating a productive garden.
Through a partnership between Beloved Communities Network and Tandi Family Farms, the 47th Avenue site is developing into an Anchor Farm and Community Food Resilience Hub—a neighborhood-centered space grounded in regenerative growing practices, food sovereignty, shared learning, and collective stewardship.
During the Victory Garden Bus Tour, visitors were able to explore the garden, learn about its development, and hear more about the partnership and the vision for creating a model that can eventually be replicated on other Oakland blocks.
Growing More Than Food
Welcoming the Victory Garden Bus Tour was especially meaningful because the Beloved Community Garden has always been about more than growing vegetables.
It is becoming a place where neighbors can gather, share knowledge and resources, learn together, and participate directly in strengthening local food resilience and the place they call home.
The tour brought that vision to life, connecting people cultivating food and community across Oakland and San Leandro and creating space to exchange ideas, experiences, and possibilities.
The day was a reminder that meaningful community infrastructure can begin with a shared vision, and people willing to work together.
We are grateful to Tandi Family Farms, everyone who joined us for the tour, and the many volunteers, neighbors, and community partners who have helped the Beloved Community Garden take root.
As the garden continues to grow, so does the vision: a neighborhood-centered model for food resilience, shared learning, and collective stewardship that can take root far beyond 47th Avenue.
And we’re only getting started.
For more information about the event, partnership and collaboration opportunities, or ways to support this work, contact:
Beloved Communities Network
Leila McCabe, Director, Beloved Communities Network
leila@belovedcommunitiesnetwork.org
(408)893-4775
https://www.belovedcommunitiesnetwork.org