Photo courtesy of Church of the Holy Cross.
Becky Wester waters crops in the accessible raised beds of the Holy Cross Community Garden last summer.
Photo courtesy of Church of the Holy Cross.
Tom Mann pushes a wheel barrow past the arbor in the Holy Cross Community during a 2016 work day. The arbor was built by Spencer Turner for his Eagle Scout project.
The Church of the Holy Cross celebrated 75 years of serving the Trussville community in late August.
“We’re planning to take a look back at the last 75 years but also focus on where we’re going over the next 75 years,” said the Rev. Wes Sharp, who became rector at Church of the Holy Cross in November, prior to their anniversary celebration.
The anniversary serves as a time to officially relaunch the revitalization of some of the church’s ministries. This includes the children’s ministry, which recently underwent a playground renovation, and the revamping of Wednesday Family Nights to provide midweek discipleship for all ages.
Another ministry being reshaped this summer and fall lies outside the church walls, in the soil of 2,500 square feet of raised beds in the church’s community garden.
Five years ago, Harold Jones and other members of the vestry discussed the idea of a community garden out of the realization that Holy Cross had plenty of land space available.
“One thing Holy Cross has is a small building, but a lot of land. I wanted to leverage some sort of outreach ministry through utilization of the blessing God gave us,” Jones said. “Jesus said feed my sheep. It’s a Christian thing to help people in need. It’s a natural Christian response. The whole purpose of the garden was to put Christ’s face into this community, reach out and serve it.”
The garden, which began as an experiment, became self-sufficient through the sale of produce on Sunday mornings, and it grew in recent years to have enough crops to give away 600-800 pounds of produce each year to the Trussville Ecumenical Assistance Ministry (TEAM).
While the garden did well in recent years, there were still parts that needed some tender loving care entering the 2017 growing season. While rain delayed the process, the summer garden is producing beans, squash and tomatoes, and half of the garden’s soil is undergoing solarization to kill off fungi and weeds and mend the soil for use in a fall/winter garden. Jones says what they may have lacked this spring and summer will be made up for this fall and winter.
Sharp calls this a rebuilding year for the garden and says he has high hopes for its use once it gets back to where it needs to be.
“It has a lot of potential to really grow and do some great ministry here locally. My hope is the community will catch on and it truly will be a community garden, not just a Holy Cross garden,” Sharp said.
Sharp said the garden helps the church be the “hands and feet of Christ” to live out the church’s vision “to captivate the hearts of the people for the glory of God.”
“We’d love to see the garden actually grow into something where it does meet the needs of people who would like some fresh vegetables who can’t … go out to the grocery store and afford to buy groceries,” Sharp said.
The garden has already worked to serve that need through its donations to TEAM. As it grows, garden organizers hope to be able to offer fresh vegetables to other organizations in or around Trussville and to homeless shelters. They also hope to eventually extend sales to the Trussville Fresh Farmers Market, which is hosted on church grounds each Tuesday and Saturday from April 30 until Nov. 1.
Garden volunteer Donna Madison, who coordinated the garden the last three years, believes the garden can also be used as an educational tool for children or teaching those with disabilities how to garden, such as a partnership with United Cerebral Palsy.
“This ministry will be limited only by the confines of our imagination, commitment, and ability to attract enough volunteers to do the necessary work,” Madison wrote about the garden in a 2016 Parish Profile piece.
Over the years, the garden has received assistance from volunteers within the church and a few outside the church. Some have been Master Gardeners, including a horticulturist who donated seeds to help get the garden going in its first year.
“It’s been invaluable,” Jones said. “We’ve been blessed with some wonderful, knowledgeable people … We’ll take any level of help people want to give us.”
