JK’s Story

Written by Mac Croom

A spiral garden is a type of garden intentionally built in a spiral shape, growing in layers around itself from a central point into a hypnotic, green helix. Typically used to plant herbs and other small plants, spiral gardens revolve around the idea that growth occurs naturally in spirals, in self-sustaining and interconnected ecosystems. They are fundamentally versatile, perfectly adaptable to any size or environmental constraint. Evidence of spiral gardens in human communities dates back thousands of years, and over time, these gardens have sustained tremendous importance (not to mention scientific validity) in communities that choose to implement them. A community spiral garden can represent the reciprocal nature of growth between the community and the earth, the importance of place-specific knowledge and memory, or the importance of community self-reflection and gratitude. At JK Willis’s farm in Chattanooga, TN, a spiral garden holds even more: the legacy of a dear friend, the health and prosperity of a community, the life-changing effects of injury, and a fierce, unbendable dedication to growth.  

. . . 

JK Willis is a community activist, organizer, and farmer from Chattanooga, TN. He is a member of the Crabtree Farms 2024 Emerging Farmer Mentorship Program, a farming access initiative designed to give beginning farmers the land, knowledge, and financial support required to start a farm. JK started his garden at Crabtree Farms in March, and has since built the space into a hub for learning and growth. He grows seasonal vegetables and flowers in the garden and hosts community gatherings, educational workshops, and after school programs for Chattanooga youth in the space. 

In addition to farming, JK is the founder of Kind Hearts Community Inc, a community organization dedicated to “spreading kindness through play, education, and community integration.” Kind Hearts Community constructs accessible playground spaces in Chattanooga and Atlanta for children with disabilities, aiming to create new, inclusive environments for individuals of all ages. Kind Hearts Community also sponsors numerous initiatives in the Chattanooga area aimed at creating spaces for education and empowerment for Chattanooga youth, including the STHEMS (Science, Technology, Horticulture, Entrepreneurship, Mental Health, and Style) after school program; Upskale, a creative clothing repurposing program for youth;  It’s Kool to Talk, a mental health awareness and wellbeing program; and Farmacy School, a horticulture education initiative JK co-founded with beloved community activist and leader Jamar Sanders in January 2023. 

JK grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana and moved to rural North Georgia when he was 14 years old. He attended Baylor High School and went on to Berry University in Miami to play basketball in college, eventually leaving to earn positions in basketball programs in Portugal and Turkey, where he played professionally for 6 years. JK returned to Chattanooga in 2014, and has been a leader for community growth in the city ever since. 

“That's why I love overalls. They are the essential uniform for somebody who's working on themselves.”

When I met JK at his garden, the very first thing I noticed about him was his overalls. They stand out vibrantly to anyone he meets: the shoulder straps hand-altered to fit his tall, basketball player’s frame, the colorful pins scattered across his chest showing off Kind Hearts Community’s art. It is a common occurrence to see JK in his overalls, and for good reason: JK wears overalls whenever he’s at work, whether building a playground or tending his garden. For JK, overalls are a symbol of dedication, self-reflection, and creation— his “essential uniform” for all things growth. 

JK wears his overalls with pride. He is proud to be always at work, on himself most of all. His garden reflects that pride and self-love too, filled with decorations made by children in his afterschool programs and teeming with plans for new things to learn and share. Ask JK about his ideas for the future of the garden and you’ll learn even more of the love he feels for the space, the community, and the soil. 

JK’s journey to farming is characterized by that love he feels for those around him and the responsibility he feels towards the people and places, including his own bodily landscape, he calls home. JK’s farming story—marked by trauma and loss but also shining with deep love and growth—is special, and young farmers across Tennessee and beyond need to hear it. 

In April 2014, on the heels of achieving the most successful professional basketball season in his career, JK sustained a devastating knee injury that ended his basketball career and inflicted permanent damage to his left leg. He had received news just hours earlier that he had been offered a spot to play for the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Summer League, a potentially life-changing opportunity for his career.  

After being rushed to the hospital and undergoing emergency surgery, JK remained there for weeks receiving supplemental surgeries, each one failing to fix the extensive damage in his knee. JK moved back to Chattanooga to receive more treatment, but as months rolled on, JK battled a tirade of setbacks and new surgeries which included an emergency operation on osteomyelitis sarcoma, an extremely rare cancer born from infected tissue, that had amassed at a life-threatening level in his knee. During that procedure, JK flatlined on the operating table before doctors were able to revive him and continue surgery. JK amassed a total of thirty surgeries on his knee over the next three years, and numerous doctors told JK his leg would have to be amputated below the knee. More told him he would never walk again. 

“That's when my real life started,” JK said. “That's when I had to see what I was really made of.” 

JK remained hopeful through the endless months of misdiagnoses and setbacks, finally undergoing his final knee surgery, three years after his initial injury, in 2017. And despite the many doctors’ warnings that he would never walk again, the surgery left JK with the ability to walk, albeit with limited mobility. He rehabilitated his knee and continued treatment for his cancer for the next two years, and was finally cleared of the cancer on December 22, 2019.

JK spent his first years in Chattanooga recovering, working through the slow process of rebuilding his health and rehabilitating his leg. During that time, JK formulated his ideas for Kind Hearts Community, reflecting on the conditions of his changed life and the new imperatives for growth it gave him.

“That's what really showed me how much our world is unkind to people with disabilities, with ailments,” he said. “It really gave me a perspective of, okay, this is something that happened to me that can happen to anybody at any given time. So I need to be the person to advocate and create something to where not only are people included, but they can thrive in that inclusion as well. I think that is the ultimate form of kindness.” 

JK founded Kind Hearts Community in 2021, synthesizing his new health with his dedication for creating spaces for inclusivity and growth. But it wasn’t long before JK’s life changed again: just months later, he met Chattanooga-beloved farmer and educator Jamar Sanders. 

From the moment they met, JK knew that Jamar was special. The two quickly bonded over their missions for community building and healing, and JK started attending events at Jamar’s garden to learn more about farming. At those events, he was blown away by Jamar’s knowledge of the land and the power of his position as a Black farmer. 

“He showed me the value of being more educated on where my food came from. And not only that, but I had never met a black farmer before that really farmed, you know what I mean? Jamar was the first person that really showed me, okay, this farming thing is not only beneficial to your health, but it's really important too.”

As their friendship grew stronger, JK began to get more and more involved with Jamar’s garden, the Spiral Garden at Crabtree Farms. The garden, which JK affectionately refers to as the “Jamarden,” provided a service and perspective unlike anything JK had ever seen before: it was a space where Black individuals like JK could learn more about farming and where Black youth could learn to reckon with and avoid the stressors, such as gun violence, that impact the lives of so many families in Chattanooga. Central to the Spiral Garden’s mission was educating and empowering young people, and JK saw in it a throughline to his own work creating accessible places for play. 

“With my passion for building playgrounds and Jamar’s passion for farming, I thought, there has got to be a way to combine his passion for wanting to teach Black kids about farming, and my passion for wanting to get more Black urban kids outside and playing and stop killing each other… And the program that we came up with, the ‘playground’ that we came up with was Farmacy Skool.”

Jamar and JK founded Farmacy Skool in January 2023 with the central goal of “putting our kids’ hands in the soil and not our youth in the soil,” merging the ideals of play, education, healing, and horticulture. The two began to run programming at the Spiral Garden, and in doing so planted seeds for a much-needed future in Chattanooga: a vision of farming centered around serving the health and wellbeing of minority, at-risk youth. 

Shortly after JK and Jamar founded Farmacy Skool, however, the dream had to be put on pause. In May 2023, Jamar was diagnosed with stomach cancer that formed into a terminal cancer in the brain. Jamar continued to follow his passion for farming and education while fighting his cancer, and JK remained a close friend during that time. 6 months later, on November 14, 2023, Jamar passed away. 

Jamar’s loss continues to be felt in the Chattanooga farming community and beyond. Jamar’s kindness and love touched so many lives, and his impact will be remembered by those who love him for generations to come. For JK, Jamar will be remembered in the love he showed the community, the Spiral Garden, and JK himself—and JK will continue to carry that legacy for the rest of his life. “He was that unique,” JK said. “He really was unique. He really was. He's worthy of any story you can ever write on him.”

. . . 

Today, JK’s garden stands on the same plot of land at Crabtree Farms where Jamar’s Spiral Garden was. If you visit the garden, you can see where the colorful paving stones remain, laid out in their beautiful swirling shape that characterizes the “Jamarden.” While he has been building his own garden, JK has taken time to start reconstructing the Spiral Garden as well, aiming to build it into a memorial for Jamar and all he’s done for Chattanooga. 

JK works every day to maintain the spiral of connections that make up his love for Jamar, the Spiral Garden, and Kind Hearts Community. He knows that his relationships with the places and people he loves, including himself, are works in progress, and as he told me in our interviews, he is nothing if not always growing. 

“I am constantly, consistently working on myself,” he said. “You can find me in overalls because I’m doing just that. Still continuing to work every day, to mourn, to move, to catch up with every day life, so I can serve my purpose.”

We cannot wait to see all that arises from that purpose at JK’s garden. And can certainly trust that Jamar’s and the Spiral Garden’s legacy is in safe hands with JK. As JK shared at the end of our interview,

“I'm dedicating everything I'm doing to farming, to Jamar. I think he gave me a gift.  I think he gave me something that he knew that I would be able to take and carry on and champion. And I think that I am in the best way that I can.”