The LEHR Garden: An Invention Sparking a Gardening Revolution in the Copper Corridor

There was a time when a gardening revolution took hold across the country. During World War I and World War II, US citizens were encouraged to plant vegetable gardens in backyards, churches, city parks, and playgrounds. By 1943, more than 40 percent of all produce grown in the country came from these gardens, which became known as Victory Gardens.

Now, an attempt to create a similar movement is gaining traction in the Copper Corridor, thanks to the invention of a new type of garden.

“Part of the problem with trying to get a lot of people to garden is that, with our modern lifestyles, we don’t have as much time as people three or four generations ago to give to gardening,” says Joanna 23, co-founder and owner of Miami Art Works art collective and founder and member of the nonprofit Miami Arts Commission in Miami. 

Several community organizations throughout the Copper Corridor, including the Miami Arts Commission, have adopted something called a LEHR Garden, which stands for “Linking Ecosystem and Hardware for Regeneration.” The garden model was invented in recent years by former Phoenix resident and civil engineer Ed Williams, and at its core is a low-maintenance raised garden bed that cycles nutrient-packed water through the system via automation, resulting in a prolific garden that produces high-quality soil. 

At the end of January, a 4 by 16-foot LEHR Garden was installed at Miami Art Works with help from community members, Miami Arts Commission members and Williams.

The adoption of a LEHR Garden at Miami Art Works is part of a vision to increase resilience within the Copper Corridor by strengthening its community centers, a concept that came from Chris Casillas, founder of Superior’s nonprofit Regenerating Sonora. Several years ago, Casillas invited local nonprofit Miami Arts Commission, along with community-based church Set Free Kearny, to collaborate in building up these three community centers as “resilience hubs” – a critical component being food security and local food production.

“That’s what led to the LEHR Garden,” Joanna says. 

In June 2023, Casillas met with Joanna and her late husband Michael 23, who was also on the arts commission and co-owner of Miami Art Works, to get the concept off the ground.

Just a few days later, Michael suddenly passed away.

“I thought with that tragedy, it made resilience seem even more important, to not let down all these people that were counting on us and just to continue the mission of a community-focused objective” Joanna says. 

Miami’s LEHR Garden was built in Superior and arrived on two trucks, assembled at Miami Artworks. 

Joanna planted a wealth of seeds: heirloom kale, speckled butter lettuce, leaf lettuce, chard, spinach, basil, cilantro, carrots, oregano, dill, parsley, broccoli, rosemary, tomatoes, peppers, onions, poppies, and garlic.

By the end of March, the garden bed had sprouted with rows of green leaves.

How a LEHR Garden Works

As someone who enjoys what he refers to as “engineering with biology,” Williams has spent a good 10 years developing and refining the design of the LEHR garden. 

The concept borrows principles of aquaponics – growing plants in water using broken down fish waste as fertilizer – while still growing in soil.

“I realized I was on to something pretty significant,” he remembers, once he realized he could leave a LEHR Garden in Phoenix heat unattended for two weeks and come back to it being as verdant as before.

At a very basic level, a LEHR Garden is a raised bed garden filled with wood chips. The garden bed is built at a slight angle with an area for food scraps (like fruit and vegetable peels) held in place at the top of the bed by mesh. A water pump with a timer is connected to the garden bed, which, several times a day, will flush water through the food scrap pile flowing downward, delivering both hydration and a wealth of nutrients to the entire garden bed. 

To make it a LEHR Garden, a few additions to the garden bed are key. Beneficial organisms and fungus are introduced. Roughly 50 red wigglers (earthworms) are added into the soil.

“Those are kind of the primary composting worms,” Williams explains. “They’re really good at breaking stuff down.”

The worms eat the decaying food scraps and turn it into compost and worm castings that provide nutrition to the plants. They also chew on broken down wood chips, which catalyzes the soil creation process in a LEHR Garden.

Once the water has traveled through the garden bed, it empties into a tank underneath, where there are a few goldfish to keep it clean and keep mosquitoes at bay. The water is then recirculated through the system again with the pump. 

“The whole thing is automated. The watering is on a timer, but then the biology in the soil handles the nutrients and the soil chemistry, and takes care of all that,” Williams says. “So actually, the biology is part of the automation.”

Planting happens once every several months and usually takes no more than a couple of minutes. The LEHR Garden also offers the option to integrate chickens, ducks, or quail around the garden bed, potential sources of eggs (and potential sources of meat). More fish are also an option. 

Meanwhile, the system is composting while the plants grow in it.

To use a LEHR Garden, “you don’t have to know how to [garden] even that well, things just grow really well,” Joanna says. 

A single LEHR Garden can generate fruits, vegetables, herbs, flowers, edible mushrooms, beneficial insects, earthworms, egg/meat options, and new soil. Because of how nutrient-rich the soil is, the garden can (and should be) densely planted.

“[Williams] said if you can see any soil at all, you haven’t planted enough,” Joanna says with a laugh. “Because the plants aren’t going to be competing, they’re going to be really well fed.”

As a result, the garden produces a lot more. 

“It’ll typically pay for itself in under three years,” Williams says. “It can produce enough food to actually start offsetting some of the groceries.”

He estimates that a LEHR Garden can use 5 to 10 gallons of water on a summer day in Phoenix, which is about 80 percent less than the amount of water used in a typical garden. When the weather is cooler, he says the garden may use just five gallons a week. 

A LEHR garden requires about an hour a month to maintain, he suggests, though numerous LEHR Garden owners say maintenance of the garden really doesn’t even require that much time. 

“There’s no fertilizers, no pesticides, no herbicides,” he adds. “We want to keep people gardening and make it as easy as possible.”

As long as a LEHR garden is densely planted with a wide variety, the chances of pest infestations are low, because a habitat forms that supports creatures that will feed on the pests. LEHR Gardens are also nutrient-rich, which leads to healthy plants with healthy immune systems, which makes pest infestations less likely.

“[The plants] have the ability to fight off the bugs that you don’t want there,” Williams explains.

The Rise of LEHR Gardens in Superior

Regenerating Sonora was founded in Superior by Chris Casillas in 2019, with its hub being Leo’s Community Development Center, an old grocery store. The nonprofit was founded to build on the strengths of the people of the town, where both people and the land are holistically healthy. 

During the height of COVID-19, Leo’s transitioned from being a gathering place to being a meal-distribution hub, and over the next two years, the organization was able to distribute more than 15,000 meals locally through a partnership with United Food Bank.

“It really opened up our eyes to how important food security is, and how insecure our food system is, here, locally,” he says. “So we wanted to set out a long-term plan on creating food resiliency here, effectively working on relocalizing our food system.”

In 2021, Regenerating Sonora was given a lot by the estate of the late Carl Erickson, a Superior community member. Erickson wanted the space to go toward some kind of community good, and the nonprofit decided the lot should be used for a community garden.

“We wanted to use the community garden as a demonstration and education site for what people could do in their own yards, because to really be food-secure, you can’t just have a few sites to grow food,” Casillas says. “We need places throughout our whole community growing food.” 

There was a problem, though. Members of the nonprofit didn’t know much about gardening. The group had other concerns, too, like planting in soil with caliche (which can limit plant growth) and increased levels of arsenic in the soil from mine waste. 

Then, Casillas met Ed Williams and learned about his LEHR Gardens.

The LEHR Garden’s raised bed eliminated concerns about arsenic and lead in the land, instead relying on nutrient-rich soil produced in the bed itself. A LEHR Garden uses recirculated water, addressing concerns about water scarcity. The automation of the garden made the prospect of gardening much less intimidating. 

With seed money from the Arizona Food Bank Network, Regenerating Sonora built their first LEHR Garden on Erickson’s lot – which became the Erickson-Hall MicroFarm.

“We tested it ourselves for three years before we were ready to say, okay, we definitely know and feel confident that this is a solution we can be advocates of and actively work to spread throughout the rest of our community,” Casillas recalls.

After installing six more LEHR Gardens in the backyards of Superior residents and seeing the successes that came with that, Casillas approached Set Free Kearny Church and Miami Arts Commission with the proposal to act as resilience hubs for their respective communities and establish LEHR Gardens onsite. Vitalyst Health Foundation, a philanthropic community health organization in Arizona, supported the idea and provided the grant funding needed to get the gardens built.

Meanwhile, there are now seven LEHR Gardens on the Erickson-Hall MicroFarm site, and 13 backyards in Superior with LEHR Gardens through Regenerating Sonora.

“It’s funny because when we first started the program, we were knocking on peoples’ doors, saying, ‘Hey, do you want a garden?’” Casillas recalls. 

Initially, many people were not interested. 

“And then, once we got the first few into peoples’ yards, then all of a sudden, the word-of-mouth and excitement really took off,” he adds. 

There is such excitement in Superior, in fact, that the demand for LEHR Gardens is exceeding the number of gardens Regenerating Sonora had initially planned for. 

Since January of this year, the nonprofit has also been harvesting produce from the Erickson Farm and using it to create free community meals – a free breakfast once a week and a free dinner once a week. As many as 30 people have been coming to the meals. The meals are open to anyone, no questions asked.

As for the future, Regenerating Sonora has high hopes for LEHR Gardens.

“We want to see that more and more of the percentage of the total food that people are eating is being grown right here either in Superior or in this region,” explains Casillas. “A big strategy for us to do that is to increase the amount of LEHRs that are in peoples’ yards.”

The aim is to have a LEHR Garden in one percent of all households in Superior by this summer, and by the end of next year, increase that number to three percent.

“Gardens are the best way, at this point, to create an agricultural revolution,” Williams concludes.

Miami Artworks now hosts a monthly garden party, open to the community, to celebrate the LEHR Garden. It’s held every second Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m.