Aware of the significance a bridge has in connecting two places, crossing bridges is an integral part of Venice Williams’ identity. Originally from Pittsburgh, the city of bridges, she grew up walking across them to get everywhere. Years later, Williams describes herself as a bridge between communities. She has made it her life’s work to connect different groups of people, helping them “bridge their uniqueness,” she says. Today she runs Alice’s Garden, an intersection of the many neighborhoods in Milwaukee.
Williams began her community work through the Lutheran Church, always using her love of food and gardening as a way to bring people together. From a young age, she learned to grow plants in her family garden. Her father was a chef, her mother a grocer. She learned the importance of cultivating her own food and having a connection to the soil. As an adult, she works to teach others that same value.
Expecting to stay for only two years, Williams moved to Milwaukee in 1989 to pursue her ministry work. She found it hard to leave the city after quickly building relationships with the people she worked with. Still in Milwaukee 13 years later, she found her way to Alice’s Garden, a community garden since the early ’70s. Located on 21st Street and Garfield Avenue, the garden presented the perfect opportunity for Williams to marry her passion for food and building community relationships. Alice’s Garden is now part of her ministry called The Table. Even as the executive director of the garden, she still calls herself the “the weed puller.”
Alice’s Garden has become a center point in the community. It is a place where people of different cultures and ethnicities intersect to celebrate their similarities through food. “Everyone wants to come to this piece of land to cultivate food, but you’re cultivating community just as much,” explains Williams. There was a point when you could tell the ethnicity of a gardener based on the crops they grew. Now the garden plots are diverse like the gardeners cultivating them. With a multitude of programs focused on food and spending time outdoors, Williams has helped people share their traditions and cultures.
The garden comes alive with programs and events during the growing season. Events like yoga classes, meditation walks, group book readings and drum circles all take place in the garden with “the sky as the ceiling,” says Williams. “We create a stronger bond with each other and with the land when we are in the open air,” she explains.
Williams believes “authentic development comes from within a community,” meaning the garden structures its programming based on what the local neighborhoods say they need. Cultivating change is a group effort, requiring help from community members and partnering organizations. Everyone involved with the garden has redefined what a community garden can be, bridging the diverse parts of a segregated city.
Learn more at facebook.com/alicesgarden