How CCSC's Garden grew to Harvest 3 Tons of Produce a Year

The delight on a child’s face when he bites into a crispy green grape, the relief on a mother’s when she is given tomatoes, herbs, peppers and onions to add to rice and beans and knows she can feed her family a delicious and nutritious dinner. That’s what the CCSC Garden is all about.

Since 2000, CCSC has operated a garden to provide hungry families with healthy fresh produce to supplement the nutritionally balanced nonperishable food packages our food pantries provide.

The original CCSC Garden was located on the grounds of Central Presbyterian Church. The Garden completely relocated to the Gethsemane Campus of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in 2011. CCSC is grateful to St. Luke’s UMC for contributing the space, water and electricity needed to support the Garden and those it feeds.

“Fresh produce shouldn’t be a luxury item, yet it is for people in tight financial situations,” Garden volunteer Margaret Weddle said when talking about the importance of the Garden.

Volunteer Joanne Murray agrees. “The best part of volunteering in the Garden is the satisfaction of providing the community with fresh produce,” Murray said. “Knowing your seedling will become someone’s food is very rewarding.”

The original CCSC Garden was the inspiration of Central Presbyterian Church’s Senior Minister Reverend Guinn Blackwell-Eagleson and the work of Master Gardener Ken Dorman and the team of Bob Strawn, George Williams, Walter Baker, and, starting in 2004, Elizabeth Castro. The Garden has grown from a few raised beds in the church parking lot to 26 raised beds, a greenhouse, a storage shed, an herb bed, two avocado trees, a grape orchard and a citrus orchard. Organic products and earth-friendly practices are used.

“It’s amazing what the gardeners do with a yearly budget of about $4,000,” Emergency Services Director Karen Holloman said. “The return on investment is spectacular. Imagine what 6,000 pounds of nearly organic produce would cost if CCSC had to purchase it.”

The Garden Team plants, weeds, composts, trims and harvests year-round. Our food pantry visitors gratefully enjoy tomatoes, eggplant, various peppers, okra, cucumbers, melons, grapes, cilantro, lettuce, cabbage, kale, collard greens, beets, radishes, turnips, sweet potatoes, carrots and onions. To date, the Garden has produced more than 115,000 pounds of produce.

“The Garden’s goal has always been to provide tasty and healthy produce for the benefit of the less fortunate within our community,” Garden Team Leader Ron Smith said. “Near term we want to find ways to meet the challenges of weather extremes and disease to maintain our annual production, typically about 6,000 pounds. In the long term, we want to add the production of the young fruit trees we are carefully tending. Once they come into full production, I hope to reach 10,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables a year.”

About 27 volunteers make up the Garden Team with a core group of about 15 volunteers who work Monday, Wednesday or Friday mornings, and some Saturdays.

“Being a gardener is such a humbling experience,” volunteer Lee Newick said. “So much can go right but so much can go wrong. It’s different every year.”

This year, the team battled the January freeze, a break in the drip irrigation system, the derecho, vandalism, and Hurricane Beryl’s driving rain and wind. They have, in a word, persevered. But perseverance is nothing new in the CCSC Garden. In 2017, Urban Harvest bestowed its Nut Grass Roots Award on the CCSC Garden. The award “recognizes a community garden that, with the persistence of Nut Grass, has persevered and triumphed over the years in spite of adverse circumstances, exhibiting determination, sustainability and—ultimately—success.”

“When the Garden was moved from the first site on the Gethsemane Campus, there was a necessary period of transition,” Master Gardner Elizabeth Castro, who accepted the Urban Harvest award, said. “For a time, there were no beds, no irrigation, and we used an empty classroom as a makeshift greenhouse. There were construction issues and a decline in production. However, no one gave up. We persevered and kept the Garden growing. If you have tenacious Nut Grass in a cultivated lawn, you know how tenacious the gardeners were.”

"Being a gardener is such a humbling experience. So much can go right but so much can go wrong. It's different every year."

-Lee Newick

Lee Newick, a Garden volunteer since 2017, harvesting peppers off broken plant stalks post Hurricane Beryl.

The Garden’s volunteers continue to be tenacious, wrapping plants and fruit trees for cold weather and immediately coming out to harvest what they could and put the Garden back to rights after Hurricane Beryl.

“Our plants didn’t suffer too badly with Beryl,” Smith said, “but we are going to need a new garden shed.”

What does it take to be a persevering Garden Team member? Surprisingly, it doesn’t take a green thumb.

“You can volunteer without knowing a lot about gardening,” Weddle said. “You just need to be someone who wants to learn and likes working outdoors with a team. I’m reminded of my first day of volunteering, I was handed a pack of carrot seeds and told to direct sow in a prepared bed. I got very nervous, worried about failure, and I told Ron I wasn’t sure I should be trusted with such a task. He was kind, and I planted the bed, but I now laugh about this and think he must have thought, ‘It’s not rocket science!’ And the carrots sprouted.”

To become part of the Garden Team, email CCSC Communications Manager Erin Donohue at volunteer@ccschouston.org. To see what’s on the Garden’s Amazon Wish List, visit https://bit.ly/CCSCWishlist.

“The Garden is Christianity in practice,” Castro said. “We hope the Garden and its fruits help others thrive.”