Growing for the community
The Story of the Christ Church Garden
With contributions from a group of volunteers, the garden was revived by God’s gracious provision. God provided horticulturalists and an irrigation system, offered to us at minimal charge!
In late 2023, we doubled the area of the garden to its current size of 15 ft by 100 ft.
After its original purpose was achieved, however, work on the garden stopped and it became a neglected patch of land covered in weeds. It stayed that way for eight years, when, in 2023, a group of church members developed a vision for reviving the garden.
The motivation for restarting work on the garden was:
1) we should make good use of the old, weedy patch, and
2) there are many ministries in the Birmingham area who may have food needs that we could help meet.
Our church garden spans 1500 sq ft and has produced over 430 pounds of vegetables over the past year. Here’s the story of how it started, how it’s going, and how we plan on using its produce to serve our local community.
How It All Started
In August 2015, Boy Scouts from Christ Church’s Troop 5 needed to complete a public service project to become Eagle Scouts. That’s when one of the Scout leaders raised the question: Why don’t we turn this unused area in the back of the church into a garden?
And that’s what they did.
Ministries we have served with the produce from the garden include The Wellhouse and Oak Mountain Missions.
This year, we are forming a closer partnership between the garden volunteers and the church staff with the goal of growing the garden into another arm of Christ Church’s outreach ministry.
We expect to harvest 60–80 lbs of produce each month while in season.
We are currently growing:
Cucumbers
Squashes
Pole beans
Zucchinis
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Broccolis
Carrots
(and more)
Here are some of our garden volunteers:
Barry Lovett
Robert Brandon
Dan Morton
Gary Reed
Barry Dodd
John Howser
Kelli Noble
Jonathan Benoit
Alan Miller
