Community Cultivators
by Tera Domaradzki, Imagine Community Gardens
These last two seasons for Imagine Community Gardens (ICG) may have been the most important seasons of all the years ICG has been providing community gardens. During the warm weather months, not only can people finally get outside for fresh air, but also the gardens have provided a place for communities to come together and enjoy each other’s presence without the worry of everything else going on in the world. There is always a profound calm and healing that comes with working in the soil, in the earth that God created. However, with these last two years, the value of spending time working in the garden and sharing life with others has been immeasurable. The connections that are made between community members, and the opportunities for leaders in the gardens to share the love of Christ with the community, continuing to shine light into dark places.
While we were not able to run all of our normal programs at all gardens last year, we compensated with door to door deliveries of vegetable and herb plants to neighbors. Several gardens also held Music in the Garden nights. This season we were blessed to be able to hold all of our traditional programs (including the return of Meet the Chef Day), in addition to our newly-added programs at various gardens. One of our locations, Prairie Pond, added a Cultural Day. Several garden members created poster boards with information about their home countries and gave presentations about them. Listening to the presenters talk enthusiastically about their countries of origin, and seeing how excited the children were to learn about them and share about their country, created a warm sense of community and love for one another that could be felt all around.
We will continue to share the love of Jesus throughout our garden locations, and welcome opportunities that give us new ways to plant more seeds of faith in Christ Jesus.
Imagine Community Gardens seeks to resource churches with products, training and manpower, to create and develop community vegetable gardens, sowing seeds of friendship, hope and faith.
