McKinney Roots at Gray Branch: A Farm Grown for Collin County

On the north side of McKinney, a stretch of city parkland is starting to look like something older than the subdivisions around it. Young peach and pear trees stand in rows. A hydroponic greenhouse catches the late-summer light. An existing barn is being turned into a kitchen, classroom, and gathering hall.

This is Phase 1 of McKinney Roots at Gray Branch Park, a 62-acre community farm at 1299 Gray Branch Road. The city's construction deadline for this first phase was August 15. This month, the farm is opening its doors.

It is not a farmers market stall, and it is not a backyard garden with a new sign. It is a working donation farm whose entire harvest is meant for Collin County tables that need it.

From three backyard gardens to a city park

McKinney Roots started in 2017 the way a lot of good local ideas start: three women growing food in their own yards and giving it away. The impulse was simple. Fresh produce should not be a luxury in a county this abundant.

By 2020 the project had become an initiative of the Seed Project Foundation, the McKinney nonprofit founded in 2015 by restaurateur and philanthropist Rick Wells. Wells grew up in the family steakhouse business, owns Wells Hospitality Group (Rick's Chophouse and Harvest at The Masonic on the historic square), and has spent years in local civic work, including time as president of the Samaritan Inn.

Under that umbrella, a donated five-acre plot in west McKinney became a real farm: cover crops, row crops, a rotational chicken coop, and a greenhouse that grows lettuce through the North Texas calendar. McKinney ISD started sending field trips. Volunteers showed up. The produce went out through churches and nonprofits, 100 percent of it staying in Collin County.

The numbers from that smaller site are worth keeping in mind, because they explain why the move to Gray Branch matters. McKinney Roots has grown more than 21 varieties of produce, raised about 340 laying hens on organic and natural practices, sent food to roughly 350 families through eight donation partners, produced more than 15 tons of seasonal crops, and grown more than 15,000 heads of lettuce a year. Two full-time farmers and a volunteer crew did that on two acres of field crops plus the greenhouse.

Gray Branch gives them room to grow the mission, not just the plants.

What Phase 1 actually is

The city bought this parkland in 2016. In 2025, McKinney City Council approved a license agreement with the Seed Project Foundation to build and maintain a nonprofit community farm on it. City Attorney Mark Houser called the vote "the culmination of a lot of work" with Wells and the foundation. The project's name on the agreement is McKinney Roots at Gray Branch Park.

Ground broke on May 15, 2026. Rick Wells told neighbors the first phase would include a 200-tree orchard of peach and pear varieties that can handle a North Texas summer, a hydroponics greenhouse, and a community center converted from the barn already on the property. The flock of chickens is slated to double. Later plans for the barn include educational space, an office, a kitchen, and a learning center.

Phase 2 construction is due by April 15, 2027, with buildings and parking still ahead. The organization has not published a full later-phase menu, but the bones are already here for school visits, volunteer days, and the kind of agricultural education you cannot get from a grocery aisle.

The point of the acreage is not spectacle. It is capacity. More rows mean more donations. Year-round greens from the greenhouse mean the winter table does not go empty. An orchard takes patience. Those trees will still be feeding people when a lot of this year's headlines are forgotten.

The people who make it work

Wells is the public face, and the farm sits inside a foundation he built around organic agriculture and hunger relief. The day-to-day is a smaller crew.

Danielle Thornton is farm director, a Texas Nursery and Landscape Associate who has spent a career in plants, from propagation to North Texas landscape work. Lenda Fidelman handles community engagement. She is a Collin County Master Gardener, a U.S. Army National Guard veteran, and co-owner of Fields of Fidelis, a lavender farm in Anna. The board is a Collin County roll call: educators, restaurant people, engineers, a Fairview council member, people who already give their time to the Samaritan Inn, Lovejoy schools, and downtown McKinney churches.

That mix is the story as much as the acreage. A donation farm only works if growers, city staff, churches, and volunteers keep showing up after the groundbreaking photos are done.

McKinney Roots is run by two full-time farmers and that volunteer bench. If you have ever packed a food-pantry box in Collin County, you already know why a peach that was picked this morning is a different gift than a can that sat on a shelf.

How to see it, and how to help

The farm is at 1299 Gray Branch Road in McKinney, in a part of town that has grown fast and still has room for something slower. The official home for hours, volunteer days, and updates is mckinneyroots.org.

If you go, go as a neighbor, not a spectator. This is working land. The harvest is spoken for. What the farm wants from the rest of us is the unglamorous stuff: hands on a Saturday, a check that keeps two farmers paid, a church or nonprofit ready to take a delivery when the lettuce is ready.

Collin County is often introduced with the wealth ranking, the GDP, the business count. Those figures are real. So is the fact that families in the same zip codes still need fresh food. McKinney Roots has been answering that quietly since 2017. Gray Branch is the same answer, written larger, on land the city already owned.

That is a Collin County story worth telling. A park that grows dinner. A barn that becomes a classroom. Trees that will outlast the news cycle, feeding people who live a few miles down the road.