Posted 63 days ago
Harvest Hill Community Garden
by Tim Honse
In late winter of this year, the idea to start a community garden began to grow among members of Second Baptist Church of Liberty, MO. Dr. David Sallee, the President of William Jewell College and a member of Second Baptist 
Church, asked the college’s Center for Justice and Sustainability if they could explore the possibility of partnering with these church members to work on the garden idea. After a couple of meetings we came up with a list of things that needed to get taken care of and divided it up between a few church members and some Jewell staff. For the most part, the Second Baptist group would handle the application process and spreading the word, and Jewell would handle the physical logistics of getting the garden up and running.
Jewell’s Athletic Department graciously donated one of their practice fields to the garden effort, so we broke ground on a large, flat, fenced-in plot of land in early spring. The Jewell Grounds crew also has gone above and beyond throughout this process to support the garden project, marking off plots, installing a water line, and keeping the grass mowed for us. We divided the area up into 174 plots, 6 ft. by 20 ft. each, and started inviting folks to join. Soon we were flooded with applications and the few of us processing them were scrambling to keep up. By mid-June we had about 50 gardeners, from beginner to experienced, growing on about 70 plots. Gardeners have joined together to help each other with tilling, sharing tools, hauling compost and mulch, and getting tips on pests.
One of the biggest challenges we have faced came to us just as the momentum had begun to grow. It has been a very wet spring and summer so far here in the Midwest, and we were no exception at Harvest Hill. Weeks of non-stop rain are challenging enough when you’re trying to get a garden started, but soon we discovered that about one third of our field was plagued with poor drainage. Many of our gardeners had to switch plots, even after they had already begun their work, moving to plots with better drainage. Quite a few seedlings were lost in the flooded plots, but all of the gardeners stuck with it and are having success in their new spots. We are exploring ways to improve drainage, and another local church has donated some excess dirt from a building project they are working on.
In the end, the Harvest Hill Community Garden has been a fruitful partnership between a number of local churches, various departments across the college, and many new friends in the Liberty community with no previous connection to any of these groups. You can read more, see a map and pictures, or even join in our online conversation
Reader Comments