Most people see an alley as a pathway to get from one place to another.
Or a dead end that leads nowhere. A place that is stark, with little beauty, atmosphere, and personality.
But Aikeem Leigh saw so much more, and has made an alley off Anderson Street in downtown Fayetteville into something special.
Aikeem is a 2nd-grade teacher at the Capitol Encore Academy located on Hay Street. He has been teaching at the school for five years, four of which he has spent instructing 3rd-grade math, and is a longtime gardener who envisioned the alley as a spot to grow flowers and vegetables.
“I enjoy planting. I enjoy teaching others how to plant,” said Aikeem, 35. “There’s something therapeutic about putting your hands in the dirt.”
He wanted to teach the students, and anyone else who was interested, the art of gardening.
When he started the garden in 2021, “it was just a blank slate, absolutely nothing,” Aikeem said. “Mr. [Gerard] Falls, who is our superintendent, came and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this space and we want you to come and do something with it.’ And I said, ‘Let’s go for it.’
“I said, ‘I really want to turn this space into a garden.’ And so I named it the Alley Garden Project.”
The beginning
Helping Aikeem get the garden started was Fredalene DeNoble, a 3rd-grade teacher at Capitol Encore Academy.
“She was like my partner-in-crime when we first got this thing going,” Aikeem said. “She was my right-hand woman.”
The two shared the same plan for the space, Fredalene said.
“We had a vision of an outside teaching space/garden,” she said. “We were thinking of the garden and making it an area where teachers can go and just sit with their students, or the students can be read to.”
So the two filled up planters and boxes.
“We took a day and built and constructed the garden,” Fredalene said. “I painted the garden boxes and made sure that the colors were bright and cheerful. We successfully opened the garden with benches for people to sit.”
And they added a lot of enthusiasm.
“I’m the person that everybody’s going to for advice,” Aikeem said. “Everybody wants to know like, ‘Hey, if I want to plant this … what do I need to do?’”
The alley is located just off the Capitol Encore Academy, which shares the passage with a building owned by Eric Lindstrom, the owner and director of design at SfL+a Architects.
“[Eric] had originally contacted us and he wanted to improve that space,” said Gerard Falls, Capitol Encore Academy superintendent. “A lot of the alleyways get very neglected and trash accumulates, things like that. So he had offered that side of the building for our students to create a mural.”
So the school’s visual arts middle school students designed a mural for the alley, Falls said, and stemming from that came Aikeem’s idea to start the garden. Aikeem put together a crowdfunding campaign to get all the supplies needed to complete the project, Falls said, after which students and vo
lunteers helped get an initial garden started.
“It’s nice to have someone dedicated to the space, and anyone can tell you it’s a huge improvement from what it was before,” Falls said.
It’s been a natural fit
Aikeem expressed a lot of interest in gardening, Falls said, adding that Aikeem shared his enthusiasm about the plants he was growing.
“We try to encourage teachers to take a thing that they enjoy and bring that into the classroom to share with the students,” Falls said.
Eric said the mural and plants have turned the alley into a beauty instead of a beast.
“It’s really nice now that they’ve been taking care of it,” Eric said. “I think everybody respects what they’re trying to do and appreciates the little pocket park they’ve created here.”
Aikeem said he was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of people interested in his garden project. He received a grant through DonorsChoose, a nonprofit geared at connecting public school teachers with donations, for $3,250 to help get things started.
“It [the grant] is a platform for schools who want to get funded for things like projects in the classroom,” Aikeem said. “ … We had small donations from parents and other donors to help with getting things like soil and other plants.”
Lowe’s also gave them a $100 gift card to spend in Lowe’s garden section, while Walmart gave them a $50 gift card to buy sealer, paint, and soil, Aikeem added.
How his interest in gardening started
Aikeem calls himself a country boy and said he has been gardening since he was about 3 years old.
He said he learned farming from his grandmother, Vera E. Hardy, who lived in the small, unincorporated community of Hollister located in Halifax County, with a population of 847, according to the 2022 census data.
“My grandmother was known for farming in Halifax County,” Aikeem said. “She did it for a living. She raised chickens, pigs … . She had her own smokehouse.”
Aikeem came to Fayetteville and earned his undergraduate degree at Fayetteville State University in 2011 and is now seeking his Master of Art in Teaching from the same university. He plans to graduate in May.
“I’m counting the days to that,” he said.
Now, he’s taking lessons that he learned while working on farmland in Halifax County and is teaching his students how to incorporate those concepts in a concrete alley in downtown Fayetteville.
“The thing that I like about gardening is there’s no one specific way to garden,” Aikeem said. “Everyone has their own different way. And you can garden in any space.”
He also said showing students how plants grow teaches them lessons that can be used for a lifetime.
“Sometimes we want things to happen instantly. We want them to happen then and there,” Aikeem said. “[Gardening] teaches you how to be patient, how to tend to something. It teaches them responsibility and how to take care of something. It teaches a lot of life skills as well.”
The Capitol Encore Academy
Capitol Encore Academy is a public charter school that is tuition free and any student in North Carolina can attend, Superintendent Falls said. The school was first established in 2014 with grades K-5, but has since expanded to serve students in grades K-12. It is housed in the historic Capitol Department Store building that was established in 1921. The department store, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, closed in 1990.
“In order to get a charter you have to have a specific mission and focus. Ours is arts integration,” Falls said. “What that means is that arts are treated as an equal to math and science and reading. In addition to having a lot of arts classes that our students take, the arts are also co-taught along with the core academic subjects.”
The Capitol Encore Academy is not all about test scores, Aikeem said.
“We incorporate the arts into a mainstream curriculum,” he said. “We want to make sure that our students are being assessed not just based on their ability to take a test, but they’re being assessed on their overall knowledge of the concept so that requires a real-life application.”
For instance, Aikeem said he incorporates math into his garden, teaching multiplication to his 3rd-grade students by planting seeds in the garden, which serves as hands-on visual learning.
“They were able to come out and say, ‘OK, I need three rows with five plants in each row. You know that’s five times three. So, how many plants do I need altogether?’ … They were able to count all of them and say, ‘I need 15 seeds to fill these holes.’”
The garden is his classroom.
“They’re not experiencing it through paper and the computers,” Aikeem said. “They actually have a hands-on experience of growing things out here in the middle of the city.”
Reaction to the Alley Garden Project
The citizens of Fayetteville appear to be responding to the alley garden.
“We have 4th Friday downtown. People come through here all the time when the garden is in full bloom, and they come and take pictures,” Aikeem said. “People come and they take pictures and hashtag it alley garden and things like that.”
Vibe Gastropub is a vegan restaurant located across the street from Capitol Encore Academy at 131 Hay St., Suite 101. As one of Capitol Encore Academy’s neighbors, Vibe Gastropub appreciates the core themes of the garden.
“I think it’s great especially with people moving towards sustainability, growing their own food, and, as someone who lived in the city and didn’t have a yard, I like the idea of learning how to grow things in the city,” said Val Humphrey, the restaurant’s assistant manager who lives in Lumberton.
“I think it’s kind of symbolic to downtown as well. You know things that are growing, downtown is growing,” Val continued. “I think the plant life brings kind of a fresh element to it.”
On a Saturday back in March, Aikeem spent a few hours refreshing his garden for the new growing season. He filled about 20 planter boxes with “75% flowers and 25% food,” he said.
Along with the students, Aikeem said he has 25 to 30 volunteers help with the garden.
Now that the garden is up and running, Aikeem said it doesn’t cost that much to keep it flourishing.
“Since we are planting perennials this year, our maintenance each year should be minimal,” he said. “We only have to refresh/fertilize the soil and prune back what has died off. We will still keep our two food beds but they require very little as we are growing those plants from seed.”
Those seeds have produced a flourishing garden in what used to be a “fire exit,” as Lindstrom said.
Fredalene, Aikeem’s partner in starting the garden, used the space to teach her science students about plants. She also hopes that others will cherish the view.
“This brought me so much joy to see the joy the children had watching their plants grow,” Fredalene said. “This is a great project for all to enjoy.”
