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Community gardens grow food, fellowship
By Emily Hill, ehill@starlocalnews.com
Green thumb? Like to help the community? Then Oak Grove United Methodist Church in Aubrey may have just the solution.
The church is working toward installing a community garden for the use of residents in local communities, and is currently searching for those interested in participating in the project, especially with specific skill sets such as fundraising, grant writing and managerial organizing. The church will be hosting a Community Garden Steering Committee meeting at 6:30 p.m. on July 29 at the church, 4725 FM 720 in Aubrey.
"Anybody in the surrounding communities can sign up," Liz Moen, reverend at Oak Grove UMC, said. "That's one of the interesting things where Oak Grove is because we can draw a 3-to-5-mile radius and have five mayors."
"We hope to enable people to feed themselves better in a more healthy and more cost-efficient way," Moen said.
The church's community garden will be located on 10 acres of church property located a mile north of U.S. Highway 380, which was donated a number of years ago by the descendants of the founding pastor of the church, the Bates family. The church's goal is to open the community garden in January 2013 in time for spring planting.
"We don't expect to use the whole thing for the garden, but we're not in a place to build on it in the near future so we fee like we could still be using it to benefit the community," Moen said. "The church in the last year has made a real effort to be a positive presence in the community, and this is a big way we can do that."
The church will have a larger plot to grow food for local food banks including the Little Elm Area Food Bank among individual plots. People will have the opportunity to sign up for a year at a time for a garden plot, which they can use year-round.
Moen said some church community gardens require people to donate a percentage of food grown or charge a fee for the use of the plots, but it remains to be seen if Oak Grove will implement that.
"We're hoping to form our committee and look at all the steps to make this garden happen," Moen said.
If a fee is implemented, the money will go straight back into the garden to pay for water, soil, tools and other supplies. The steering committee will decide the organizational structure, guidelines on use of the garden, overseeing the creation of the garden and gathering financial, material and volunteer support.
"We're looking for people interested in gardening and interested in making a positive impact in the community," Moen said.
Community gardens are quickly becoming a popular trend in the Metroplex over the last four years, with an emphasis on vegetable gardening. Denton County alone has at least 13 gardens located in cities such as Denton, Coppell, Carrollton and Lewisville.
"I think we haven't seen them so much in Texas because we have space," said Janet Laminack, Denton County Texas AgriLife Extension agent.
Laminack believes that the "local food movement" has become popular because of books promoting a healthy diet, eating locally and knowing the food one eats better. Another reason is sometimes yards are too shady for growing a garden.
"And possibly the recession also happened at the same time and people thought about Victory Gardens again," Laminack said.
The Texas AgriLife Extension Service Website for Denton County (http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/) and the Master Gardener Program (www.dcmga.com) provides online access for those interested in gardening plants that can be grown in the area and how to tend to them. The help desk can be contacted at 940-349-2892 or email at master.gardener@dentoncounty.com.
"[Community gardens] do a good job in educating people on how to garden," Laminack said. "I think it's always a good thing when people learn to garden and learn to grown their own food. I think it's also been beneficial on all these gardens providing product to the food pantries."
Laminack believes that community gardens are also a good way to see what everyone else is doing and gain experience. She said churches are realizing that these gardens can be used as an outreach to the community.
Moen said at Oak Grove, people have mentioned off and on over the years about starting a community garden. Some church members had an opportunity to attend training last spring on creating a community garden, giving the church a boost in turning that dream into a reality with the help of the community.
"One of the things that is really important to me and other leaders in the church is that this be a community garden from the beginning. We want community members from the get-go," Moen said.
To learn more, send an email Moen at revmoen@gmail.com or call 972-948-5984, or email Project Coordinator Jeanne Mathis at jmathis@lsic.net, and attend the meeting on July 29.
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