Organizers at a some area Lutheran churches are offering community garden plots to the public this spring in an effort to help people find “faith in daily living.”
That’s the mission of United by Faith Church in Evergreen Park, said its garden coordinator, Bonita Osborne.
“It’s also to encourage the community to take care of the Earth,” she said.
Raised garden beds can be leased on church grounds for $50 for the season with a $10 deposit.
Osborne said the program started five years ago with four beds and has grown to 20 beds this year.
And the idea seems to be catching on.
Osborne said she’s been working with organizers at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Oak Forest to help them launch their community garden program this year.
She said the garden boxes at Redeemer are more wheelchair-friendly because they’re surrounded by asphalt whereas the boxes at United are surrounded by grass and mulch.
For their donation, gardeners receive an 8-by-3 foot box filled with soil enriched with organic compost and use of water from one of ten rain barrels.
Osborne and other volunteers pull weeds and do other maintenance around the beds.
For gardener Jeanne Duh the return is well worth it.
She said she’s tried gardening several times at her Tinley Park home but wasn’t very successful and thinks it might be because there’s too much shade on her property.
Duh said she also grew tomatoes one year at the side of her house but raccoons and squirrels kept picking at them.
Since she began gardening at her church the harvest of peppers, cucumbers and other vegetables has been so bountiful that she often shares her produce with her neighbors.
Duh said she also likes that no pesticides are used in the area of the garden beds and everything is organic.
“I just like the fact that I’m able to grow food for myself and have healthy food,” she said.
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Most gardeners plant vegetable and herbs at the church but some plants marigolds, as well, to help with pest control.
Osborne said some gardeners donate some of their produce to the church’s adjacent food pantry.
Garden beds also are offered free to lease to food pantry clients and veterans.
In addition to the 20 beds available to lease, there are 10 more beds that Duh and children from the church’s day care maintain.
The food produced here feeds the around 60 children in the day care daily.
All scraps from the church’s kitchen are then used for compost in an effort to turn the church “green.”
Also on the site adjacent to the garden boxes is a “living labyrinth” flower garden that will soon be filled with tulips, daffodils and other spring perennials.
A visitor follows the path through the garden to the bench in the center.
Osborne said the experience is meant to “clear the mind.”
She said nurses from nearby Kedzie Medical Associates often visit the garden to de-stress.
The garden beds will be available at both churches in coming weeks, after the threat of frost advisories has passed.
Information and applications for garden plots are with Osborne at 708-722-6301, [email protected] or Marilyn Fisher at Redeemer at 708-567-1039, [email protected].
Frank Vaisvilas is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.