Church garden grows community, produce

Lola Pillarella, Lincroft, works in the Community Plant-a-Row for the Hungry Garden at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Middletown on April 10. CHRIS KELLY MIDDLETOWN — Westminster Presbyterian Church quietly sits set several hundred feet back from Tindall Road. On April 10, however, the church’s front lawn was abuzz with activity as church members prepared a new garden for the grand opening the next day.

Julie Bair, chair of the church’s Mission Committee, the parent committee of the Garden Committee, gave the Rev. Joseph Hein credit for the idea. Hein, in turn, gave Bair and the committee credit for expanding on it.

“I had a little, tiny kernel [of an idea] that Julie and the committee have grown into a beautiful thing,” Hein said.

Hein and Bair felt a Plant-a-Row for the Hungry (PAR) garden would be the best way to use the church’s open space while expanding its mission and involving the community.

John Pillarella readies the earth for planting in the garden on April 10. CHRIS KELLY “We figured if we used the land in the front people would see us out here and get involved and that’s what ended up happening,” he said.

Bair received calls from Girl Scouts, the Middletown Lions Club and local families interested in becoming involved. The church youth group and preschool will also work garden plots.

Bair said almost every plot has a caretaker.

Church members are striving to grow and donate 1,000 pounds of organic produce to local soup kitchens, food pantries and needy families.

“Most of the food pantries get canned food, not really healthy, and lower-income families that are utilizing food pantries aren’t getting fresh produce,” Bair said.

However, dealing with fresh, unpreserved produce presents some challenges.

“It’s tricky because the food will mature at different points,” Hein said, “so we have to be able to get out the fresh produce that day. We have to have a place immediately ready to receive and use it.”

Hein sees Lunch Break in Red Bank as an ideal solution to the problem. As a soup kitchen, Lunch Break prepares meals daily and could quickly use the donated produce, he reasons.

The garden’s bounty will also be donated to the church’s own pantry, and the Middletown Lions Club plans to donate to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church soup kitchen in Keansburg, Bair added.

Garden plot caretakers will provide the labor and in most cases the seeds or young plants as well. Caretakers choose what to grow, though the church requests an emphasis on healthy vegetables. Westminster Presbyterian Church will handle the watering.

Getting the project under way has already been a community-wide effort.

A picnic table and shed were donated. Foodtown, ShopRite, Stop & Shop, Lowe’s, Middletown Pancake House, Yardworks, National Amusements, Red Bank Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, World Jeep Subaru and Betsy Ross Farm also made donations.

The biggest contributor Bair said was Ed Bennett and Bennett Landscape Associates, which provided rocks, mulch, and adopted plots to tend.

Everything in the garden was made possible by fundraising and donations, Bair said.

Hein said the Monmouth County Presbytery also contributed a $1,000 start-up grant to Westminster Presbyterian Church.

The committee will continue fundraising to add gutters and rain barrels to the shed to be as green as possible.

If the church needs to supplement watering beyond what the barrels gather, that would be a significant cost, Hein said, but one the church would assume.

Though the planting has just begun, Hein, Bair and the committee are already planning for the project’s future.

Bair has contacted the Juvenile Department of Corrections about possibly having the youths work in the garden as community service. They would also be allowed to take the fruits of their labor home if they come from economically disadvantaged families.

Hein has also reached out to the Monmouth County School District to involve developmentally disabled students and local assisted living facilities to involve the elderly who may have lost their gardens.

“We’re bringing the old and the young together as well and giving them an opportunity to garden again,” Bair said.

The garden is part of the church’s revised mission statement to intentionally engage its neighborhood and community. The church’s preschool, opening in September, is another aspect of this goal.

“The neat thing for me is that we have different community groups interacting in here constantly. That’s the thing that captures my imagination. We’re going to make friends in here, in addition to the goal of growing food for the poor and being green,” Hein said.

“We already have [made friends],” Bair added. “The committee really didn’t know each other when we started and we’ve grown quite close; we’ve spent a lot of time together in the dirt.

“For a long time it was just a patch of dirt out here, but [the committee] could see promise in it and they saw faith. They really know that they are making a difference,” Bair said. “It has been a pleasure watching it all come together.”

More information on Westminster PresbyterianChurch and its PAR garden can be found at www.wpcmiddletown.org.