Right across from Atholton High School in Columbia, Maryland, sits a garden roughly a third of an acre with rows of vegetable beds and a newly added pond to encourage wildlife. The garden, located along the road so its the first thing people see when they drive past, is being managed mostly by students who planted their first perennial seeds to support pollinators last fall and are now eagerly waiting to see what springs up.

It is part of a 6.4-acre plot of farmland bought last June by the Community Ecology Institute, a nonprofit that seeks to reunite people with nature, from a retiring organic farmer who had managed it since the 1980s and didnt want it to be lost to development. Fifty years ago, the entire area was agricultural land. Today, this plot is the only farm left. And one of the first things the Community Ecology Institute did when it took over the farm was to plant this climate victory garden.

The nonprofit is one of over 2,000 organizations and individuals across the country growing food in climate victory gardens be it on a balcony or in a backyard, a community garden or larger urban farm project in a bid to mitigate the climate crisis.

Climate change is a tremendous crisis, but its also a really amazing opportunity to shift the way that weve been doing things that no longer work, said Chiara DAmore, the Community Ecology Institutes executive director. We want to use the entire farm as a way to teach about climate action and we see land-based climate action as one of the more tangible, gratifying ways to help people feel like theres some hope, feel like theres something they can do.