Did you know that there is an urban farm on Whitney Street in Rochester? Green Visions, the workforce development arm of Rochester’s Greentopia initiative, is unique not just to our area but to New York State as well. You’d have to travel a long way to find a similar urban farm, explains director Morgan Barry— maybe to Detroit or Los Angeles. Of the large urban farming programs in those cities, he says “I’d love to get to where they are, recognition-wise.”
The young adults who work at Green Visions in the JOSANA (Jay Orchard Street Area Neighborhood Association) neighborhood each summer plant and care for thousands of flowers every year. They harvest and arrange dahlias, zinnias, and other flowers into bouquets for sale at Wegmans and the Rochester Public Market.
“I relate to these kids in a lot of different ways,” says Barry. Now forty-three, he grew up in Rochester and is “a product of the City of Rochester schools.” As a young person, Barry dealt with many of the same issues that program participants face. This allows him to “communicate on a level that’s genuine.” Most participants are eighteen to twenty-four years old. As adults, they already have their own unique life experiences and worldview. Most people, Barry says, would tell these young people to finish high school, go to college, and get a job. “That advice doesn’t really make sense for everyone,” he notes. Some program participants are teen parents, or they are well into their twenties without a high school diploma and very little work experience. Some do not have a stable place to live. “Always start with ‘tell me about you,’” when talking to the participants says Barry. He listens to the participants’ concerns and meets them where they are to help them participate successfully in the program. He also encourages them to think about their life goals. Along with flower cultivation, participants learn about financial literacy and how to write a résumé, as well as soft skills: “the things that go along with retaining a job, seeing something through.” It’s important to make the lessons land in ways that are universal, he goes on to say, because that can have repercussions in peoples’ lives that go beyond flower farming.
Financial literacy, too, is different for each participant, explains Barry. For most people it would mean opening a bank account and understanding how a checking account works. But program participants have varying needs. “Some of them are more interested in credit score,” how to save money, or investing.
In 2013, the program took place on one vacant lot owned by the City of Rochester. Over the years, Green Visions bought the land and acquired the adjacent lots, expanding to one acre. “We’ve grown in leaps and bounds,” says Barry.
For years, the program had been taking place next to a rundown abandoned house. Barry and program director Lisa Baron decided they should buy it and turn it into a place for program participants to attend training sessions and update their résumés. The 120-year-old building had been vacant for twenty years before being bought by people who thought they could flip or rent it. Unfortunately, Barry explains, the would be flippers found that the building was gutted. “There wasn’t a gram of copper in the place,” he had been. “There wasn’t a single pipe.” When it was purchased by Green Visions for about $30,000, it took a lot of work and fundraising to get it to a place where it became a training facility. “After thirteen years, we finally have a home.”
For the first time, last year Green Visions ran its new winter program. In contrast to the summer program and its focus on workforce development and soft skills, the winter program is more specifically focused on learning landscaping. Participants can become certified landscape technicians through Cornell Cooperative Extension and then potentially find work with the City of Rochester or other organizations.
Both programs have been very successful and boast high retention rates. Green Visions hopes to keep expanding to be able to serve more individuals and to partner with more community agencies to provide as many varied opportunities as they can for the young people in Rochester.
After thirteen years, there are many success stories, but Daundre Miller’s story stands out. Most participants are from Rochester, but Miller, twenty-one, is an immigrant from Antigua. He studied agriculture in his home country and brought some cultivation knowledge with him to the job. Miller feels that meeting Morgan Barry was “very miraculous,” as he was looking for a job and to learn “the American way.” The program helped him not just professionally but personally, he says, “to build my life.” Miller started with the program in 2022 and the next summer he came back as a manager. Miller was “a shy guy,” when he started, says Barry, but he was hardworking and reliable, and Barry saw that he was manager material. “He kept showing up,” Barry says. “He’s a lead-by-example guy.” Miller came to the U.S. with his two younger brothers, who just turned ten and twelve, and he is their sole support. He now has completed both the summer and winter programs, earned a landscaping certification, and worked for Cornell Cooperative Extension and other businesses. He will be the site manager for Green Visions again in summer 2025. Miller has already begun mentoring others, including helping another young man navigate the green card process. Although Miller enjoys landscaping, “working with others made me feel like I want to go into teaching,” he says. He’s been able to make connections that will help him pursue a teaching career and says that the Green Visions program opened a lot of doors. He definitely recommends the program to anyone who wants to upscale their life.
More than 150 young adults have participated in the Green Visions program so far. “We have this roster of graduates who are all doing really interesting things,” Barry says. Participants have gone on to successful careers in sales, nursing, human services, construction, and more. “It really runs the gamut.”
Learn more at greenvisions.org.
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of (585).
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