Like Boston Urban Gardeners, the Southwest Corridor Community Farm was founded in 1977 and included some of the same key individuals. The group incorporated as a non-profit organization to address issues of unemployment, job training, environmental education, and urban gardening in the neighborhoods in and around the Southwest Corridor, a swathe of land that lay vacant during the planning stages of new urban rail lines. The land was owned by the state, and the group secured permission to use a one-acre site to build an urban farm and education center.

The Farm was started with support from Boston's Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), which enabled the hiring of twenty-one unemployed people for one year. This first group built and developed the farm's gardens and greenhouse. Although the CETA contract lasted for only one year, crucial relationships were formed to sustain the volunteer community gardening project. For several years the Southwest Corridor Community Farm succeeded as a volunteer organization. In the greenhouse, it produced thousands of vegetable seedlings for other community gardens.

By 1979, the farm received sufficient funding to hire a staff member and continued to develop as an urban environmental center. The farm's activities expanded into education, produce marketing, and landscape construction and maintenance. Staff and volunteers taught horticulture and environmental issues as an introduction to science at nearby elementary schools, which at the time had no science curriculum. The farm sponsored the Jamaica Plain Farmers' Market. It established a landscape crew and obtained contracts from city agencies to maintain parkland.

In 1990 the Southwest Corridor Community Farm merged with Boston Urban Gardeners. For thirteen years these two organizations had persevered in Boston; one as a city-wide umbrella program and the other as a community-centered project center. While their original goals were motivated by similar circumstances, they evolved along different tracks and their activities complemented one another. BUG's staff had been largely organizers, designers, and technical advisors; the Farm's staff was mainly landscapers. There were always strong personal ties between the two organizations. The merging of these organizations has created a comprehensive organization that is firmly rooted in the community but that serves the entire city. The merger marks the beginning of a critical phase in any organization's history--the passing on of leadership to new leaders. Charlotte Kahn, who was one of the two original co-directors of BUG and its executive director and who was also the first president of the Southwest Corridor Community Farm, has left the organization to work on another project--The Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts. During the transition period, she retained her affiliation with BUG at the Community Farm as a member of the Board of Directors.