Longtime Maple Grove residents remember looking over the corner of Bass Lake Road and County Road 101 and seeing acres of rich farmland, owned and farmed by Ed and Neoma Bather. When the corn was high, neighbors could count on the Bather children to be on the job there, selling just-picked sweet corn to passersby.
It would be easy to assume that when Lord of Life Lutheran Church purchased 31 acres on that corner in 1998 and completed a new church onsite in 2001, the Bathers’ former land would lay fallow. But now the corner is verdant once again—with 15 or more crops in Maple Grove’s first community garden.
LifeGARDEN sprang to life in spring 2010 as a community garden “maintained by a community to meet the needs of the community,” according to a Lord of Life mission statement. Ninety gardeners worked this land in its first season. Half of the 1.5-acre garden contains 160 plots, each 10 by 10 feet, tended by individuals—including Lord of Life members as well as other residents of Maple Grove and other cities—for a $25 annual maintenance fee per plot. The other half is a communal mission garden, tended by volunteers, with its produce donated to local food shelf Christians Reaching Out in Social Service (CROSS).
In its first season, the mission garden produced an impressive 8,000 pounds of vegetables for CROSS, plus a cash contribution of nearly $700 for CROSS from donations for pumpkins and cornstalks. More than 400 volunteer hours were contributed in LifeGARDEN, which joins the ranks of more than 250 community gardens and among the approximately 25 “faith-based” (i.e. run by a religious organization) community gardens in the Twin Cities.
Cultivating a Plan
LifeGARDEN is the brainchild of Lord of Life Director of Worship Alice Cummings, who is also a Hennepin County master gardener. The seeds of the idea were sown six years ago when Cummings attended a conference that addressed how worship planners might help congregations become more aware of God’s creation, and how to become reacquainted with the land. “I began thinking about all the land we are fortunate to have around our building, and the idea of developing a community garden began to develop,” Cummings recalls.
The plan germinated for a while with Cummings, who has been gardening since childhood. When Lord of Life member John Bartsch approached her with the same idea, the momentum built. Soon, there was a flurry of activity.
Lord of Life provided funding to amend the soil, build a fence, purchase seeds and plants, extend the irrigation system out to the garden, and supply some tools for the mission garden. Individual gardeners provided their own seeds, plants, stakes and fences, and they volunteered time in the mission garden. “It is sort of like a coop … everyone helped decide how things would be done,” Cummings says. “I was just the facilitator. We worked hard to gain consensus each step of the way.”
Bartsch recalls there was much interest, as well as camaraderie, from the start: “We had a dedicated group of volunteers who showed up regularly in April and early May to prepare and till the soil, build the fence, plant the community garden, and tend and harvest the 15-or-so different crops. There are many couples and families working together in the community garden or their individual plots, which is very satisfying to see.”
Growing a Community
Community gardens promote neighborliness and social contacts among community members, says Cummings. Gardens help to establish pride in an area and provide a way for people in the community to get to know one another.
“I’ve noticed people socializing out there,” says Cummings. “I call it community-building; older people meeting young families. People saying, ‘Hey, anyone need another pepper plant? We have an extra.’”
The garden brings together people who might not otherwise connect—or perhaps connect in the same way, even within the same family. “My son Zachary helped many hours in preparation,” recalls Bartsch, “planting and tilling for weed control, allowing us some quality time together working for the benefit of others, which provides a valuable lesson in service. Although I may have bribed him with a McFlurry a few of those days!”
Reaping Rewards
Part of the mission of LifeGARDEN is to provide a place for gardeners to grow spiritually as well as to provide nutrition for the body, says Cummings, and to share the fruits of their efforts with the community. To that end, the mission garden—the half of the garden that grows produce for the food shelf—provides a much-needed service. CROSS is the only food shelf serving Maple Grove, Osseo, West Champlin, Dayton, Rogers, Corcoran and Hassan Township. According to a 2010 count, CROSS serves more than 500 families—1,737 people total (1,051 adults and 686 children).
By June 2010, Char Lake, CROSS coordinator, recalls getting a call every other day from Cummings requesting a pickup from LifeGARDEN. Produce planted for CROSS included tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, beans, carrots, beets, onions, squash, potatoes and pumpkins. “It’s going to be a good partnership,” Lake says. “I hope they’re setting the pace for more people and more churches to do this. Everyone is trying to eat healthier, so we struggle trying to get healthy food. We welcome more produce.”
Cummings has fulfilled a dream with LifeGARDEN, as well as winning an award for her work: The University of Minnesota Master Gardeners of Hennepin County awarded her the 2010 Green Leaf Award, which recognizes master gardeners who “greatly contributed to a successful project supporting and endorsing environmental stewardship within Hennepin County, engaged the local community, led activities to complete the project and actively participated throughout the project.”
But Cummings is far from finished. Future possibilities for the garden include raised beds for those who need more accessible gardening, and after that, fruit trees and fruit plants, she says. Until then, the corner of 101 and Bass Lake Road has come full circle, once again producing food for its neighbors, as well as nourishment for the spirit and lessons for life that extend far beyond the garden borders. “I learned valuable skills that I have used in other settings at work,” Cummings says. “It’s helped our worship meetings be more productive. At one of the first garden meetings, one of the members of the core committee said she had never seen a meeting run so smoothly, even in the corporate world.”
For Bartsch, a third-generation North Dakota farmer until he moved to Maple Grove in 1989, reconnecting with the earth is a key benefit in the LifeGARDEN. “People lose their connection to the land and farming as generations move away from the rural parts of our region,” he says. “People also lose their understanding of how much planning, effort, risk and satisfaction goes with feeding your family, and more importantly, helping those who lack the resources to feed themselves. Through LifeGARDEN, I think we are doing both—helping our neighbors and increasing our appreciation for how God designed our food system to be.”
Get Connected
Gardening in LifeGARDEN is open to all members of the community, not just members of Lord of Life, space permitting. For more information, contact Alice Cummings, 763.420.5015 ext. 114, garden@lordoflife.org.
Community Gardening
Community gardens are enjoying a huge national resurgence. It’s a new take on an old idea—the victory gardens from World War I and II, which aimed to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. Now consumers are latching onto local food and the grow-your-own movement, more aware of how and where their food is grown.
Of the more than 200 community gardens in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis is the oldest continuously functioning community garden in the metro area, one of two known Victory Gardens remaining. Get more info at dowlingcommunitygarden.org.
For more on community gardens, see gardeningmatters.org and communitygarden.org.
