Garden ministry grows more than vegetables

Connections among people of different ages and cultures. Connections to the land. Connections to the past. Connections to the future. Connections to God. What on earth could grow so many connections?

A garden.

This will be the fifth summer for the garden ministry at Madison Christian Community. The MCC is an ecumenical partnership between Advent Lutheran Church and Community of Hope United Church of Christ in Madison, Wis. The two congregations share a building, staff and a piece of land that includes a restored prairie, a rain garden, a memorial garden and the 6,000-square-foot vegetable garden that fosters so many connections.

Jeffrey T. Wild, pastor of Advent, said the idea for the garden ministry came to him as an “aha” moment during a walk on a nature trail near his home. “I saw a great opportunity for a connection between our church and Wexford Ridge, which is only one mile away,” he said.

While the MCC is surrounded by large, comfortable homes, Wexford Ridge, just down the road, is a neighborhood of subsidized housing with a relatively high crime rate.

“For me it was a longing to connect with people beyond our congregation in a way that was meaningful for all of us,” Wild said. “And growing vegetables was a way to do it.”

The ministry is a partnership of the MCC and the Wexford Ridge Neighborhood Center, which runs an eight-week summer day camp for children. During those eight weeks, the children meet with volunteers from the MCC two mornings a week for about two hours.

“During that time, kids partner up with an adult,” saidAdvent member Ann Grugel. “They do some work in the garden—weed, water, put mulch down, pick vegetables, look at growth. We did some journaling last summer and once a week they took pictures of their garden experiences.”

The children also prepared dishes with what was available in the garden. “We’d have stir-fry, pizza, spinach salad and they liked it—most of it,” Grugel said.

Of course, a large vegetable garden needs more attention than the campers can give. At the start of each season, inmates involved in a horticulture program at Oakhill Correctional Institution in nearby Oregon, Wis., donate starter plants and help put in garden fencing and mulch.

MCC volunteers, ranging in age from 12 to 82, work with the campers and whenever the garden needs tending. “With our own members, they’re making a substantial commitment of their time over the course of a season and they keep coming back. Our members volunteer 700 hours in one season,” Wild said.

A growing ministry

That’s a lot of hours. But a lot comes out of that garden—more than vegetables.

“The goal was to build relationships and to grow some vegetables that these kids could take home and share with their families and learn to prepare,” Wild said.

“But, it got bigger and more successful each year, so the kids were taking things home and the rest was going to a food pantry,” Grugel added. “Last year we probably had close to a ton of food that we donated.”

Then there are the lessons in respecting other cultures. Last year all 15 campers, who ranged in age from 7 to 10, were children of color—Hmong, African-American, a boy from Togo. Consequently, much thought was put into planting vegetables that are meaningful to different cultures—the cultures of the campers and of those receiving donated produce.

“There are different kinds of peppers that we grow,” Grugel said. “We grow collards, which are so much appreciated. Different squashes. We think about the different cultures and cuisines that we can support. The kids are very aware of what vegetables are prized by different cultures.”

Last summer, peppers used in Hmong cuisine helped one camper connect to her past. “She talked about peppers and how they’re so important to her culture,” Grugel recalled. “She remembered planting seeds with her grandmother back in Laos. Through the land, because of the smells and the way things feel, the garden connected her to memories that she probably would have forgotten.”

Reflecting on the ministry, Grugel said, “Originally our goals were more concrete, but as time went on it was less about the vegetables and more about the relationships with people and environmental systems. Oftentimes land is a place of controversy and this is a land that mediates connections and that doesn’t happen very much in our world.”

Grugel, who is working on a doctorate in education, looks at the ministry with an educator’s perspective. “Children don’t play outside anymore and we’re losing that sense of connection to the land,” she lamented. “That has an impact on what it means to be an environmentalist. If you haven’t developed an eco-identity, then recycling just becomes this action and it doesn’t connect to an ideology that we have.”

She recalls watching a camper move an earthworm off the blacktop and into the soil last summer, after a rain. When Grugel asked her why she did it, the girl responded, “Because I learned in the garden that we need the worms so the earth can breathe.”

“For me it’s very theological,” Wild said of the ministry. “I see that community is being built in the garden and it’s not hierarchical in any sense. You have people young and old, and of different nationalities, working side by side. It makes me deeply aware of God’s abundance. The bottom line for me is that it’s a great joy. It’s fun. It takes a lot of work, but it’s a great pleasure. It’s the deep connection it fosters with creation and the joy that comes with gardening itself.”

Debra Illingworth Greene, a freelance writer and editor based in Madison, Wis., enjoys her vegetables and strives to eat locally-grown food as much as possible.

Copyright © 2008 Debra Greene. Used by permission.

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