Our Nursery
Ploughshares trains and employs residents of the Alameda Point Collaborative supportive housing community.
Ploughshares Nursery is a Social Enterprise of the Alameda Point Collaborative supportive housing community.
100% of our sales support housing for formerly homeless families.
We advance our local community and the planet by:
- Selling products that protect the environment
- Using recycled materials whenever possible
- Creating job training and employment opportunities for residents of APC housing
- Generating revenue to support APC housing
We offer free hands-on workshops throughout the year on subjects such as ‘year round vegetable gardening’, ‘drip irrigation’, ‘pruning’, ‘dry composting’, ‘worm composting’, ‘how to plant stuff and succeed’, ‘habitat gardening’, ‘care and feeding of native plants’, ‘growing awesome tomatoes’, ‘container gardening’, ‘sheet mulching’, ‘care and feeding of succulents’. We are proud to host speakers on subjects ranging from ‘tool sharpening’ to ‘the life-cycle of Monarch Butterflies’ and ‘introductory permaculture’. Our workshops are best when they are collaborations between the attendees and the hosts because we understand that gardening is community-art and we know the best artists are the home gardeners in our community. Sign up for our newsletter and come on down for a free workshop, its not a classroom to passively attend, you’ll be helping others to learn when you offer your own experience.
Reduce your carbon footprint by car pooling with friends to Ploughshares. Or you can plan your trip on SF Bay Ferry here. Ploughshares Nursery is located just a short walk from the Alameda – Main St Terminal. You can plan your trip on AC Transit here. The closest line to Ploughshares Nursery is the 96 line.
Ploughshares is growing a new building to show off our products and offer classroom space for our workshops and for other similar organizations to utilize. The structure will be the ‘greenest’ building in Alameda when it is completed. Features include; straw bale walls, living roof, gray water recycle system, solar power, recycled building materials and actual real indoor plumbing like fancy city folk use! We are grateful to Bonita Gardening Club, Yahoo Employee Foundation, City of Alameda/CBDO, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Community Services for funding which will one day make this dream a reality.