There is something growing along the parking lot at Emannuel Mennonite Church in Abbotsford.

Several lush garden boxes and containers are bursting with vegetables, herbs, and flowers. These little gardens are carefully tended by people who participate in the Community Living Program (CLP) at Communitas Supportive Care Society.

The garden serves two purposes: it is a place to teach new skills while providing fresh produce for the people they serve.

Dora is one of several people who visits the garden each week to help weed the beds and make sure the veggies are being watered. Her favourite part of the garden is being able to feel all the veggies that are growing and knowing that she had a hand in growing them.

“My favourite veggie from the garden so far has been the snap pea,” Dora said. “I loved them!”

Planting a Seed

The garden project began with a need. Lisa McIntosh manages CLP. She and her staff realized that the people they serve are finding it difficult to access affordable, healthy food.

“It is getting harder and harder in this economy to eat healthy,” Lisa says. “We were getting a little worried about our people.”

Lisa and her team began to brainstorm possibilities and as they did, the seed of an idea was planted: What if they could teach people how to grow their own food? The challenge was finding a place to plant a garden.

As it turned out, a fellow Communitas staff person who attends Emmanuel was aware that there were several garden boxes at the church that were no longer being utilized by their congregation members. The church was happy to make these available and so the garden project began.

Watching it Grow

Nicole Neuberg is a life skills worker with Communitas. She is also an avid gardener. Nicole was tasked with creating curriculum that the team could use to help teach people how to bring a garden to life.

“I thought about all the steps needed to grow produce each year,” Nicole says. “Then I took those steps and wrote 25 lessons that broke it all down into small pieces of information.”

The lessons cover everything from setting up the garden, to planting, everyday care, harvesting, preserving, and saving seeds for next year. There are also lessons about some specific crops and insects in the garden.

In early spring, staff prepared seven garden boxes, three grow bags, and two re-purposed garbage cans with soil and compost. Then everyone visited two local nurseries to purchase seeds and seedlings.

Over the course of the spring, participants and staff would visit the garden daily to weed, water, and watch things grow. Two CLP alumni committed to visiting the garden over the weekend to make sure that it wouldn’t dry out in hot weather.

All the hard work paid off: the things that were planted started to grow!

Elizabeth and her mother planted seeds together at that first outing. Elizabeth has thoroughly enjoyed learning how to plant vegetables. She loves the strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peas.

“My favourite part of the garden is seeing everything grow,” Elizabeth says.

People Grow Too

One of the things that Nicole has noticed is the correlation between ideas and experience. Hearing about gardening is not the same as doing it.

“Knowing that a carrot comes from the garden is very different than knowing that a tiny, tiny seed is planted, watered, thinned, grown and then picked,” Nicole explains.

Participants have learned how to give the garden the attention it needs and for Nicole, this has been the highlight of the project.

“I love going into my own garden at home and checking on the plants and eating fresh vegetables,” Nicole says. “It has been so great to share that with the people we serve. Their curiosity and joy in what is growing is fantastic.”

Winni has really enjoyed all aspects of being in the garden: watering, pulling weeds, and sampling the produce.

“I also love the lessons we have, like learning about the minerals in the soil,” Winni says.

Reaping a Harvest, Sharing with Others

It is mid-summer now and the boxes are bursting with fresh produce: carrots, lettuce, beets, tomatoes, peppers, basil, marigolds, spinach, acorn squash, pole beans, snap peas, zucchini, scallions, onions, chives, cucumber, strawberries, dill and potatoes. The sunflowers were started by one of the Sunday school classes at the church and gifted to the garden. 

Participants have been able to supplement their groceries with fresh food from the gardens. They’ve also been able to share this with the community around the church.

“Although we wanted to teach the people we serve and have them benefit from the garden, we also realized that the community could benefit as well,” Nicole explains.

So they designated two boxes for the community, putting up signs encouraging people to help themselves. This part of the garden project has also proved successful.

“This has become another way for the people we serve to recognize the needs of others and help in a practical way,” Nicole says.