A new community garden at the Prince of Peace Lutheran congregation in Logan is providing an anonymous food source for hungry families in Cache Valley.
Preparations for the Hope Community Garden’s opening celebration were underway when I arrived this past Friday. The lawnmower was making its way around small apple trees, and drip systems for garden boxes were being installed.
At the celebration on May 13, community members around Cache County planted their own garden boxes free of charge, giving them an opportunity to grow their own produce this year. Garden boxes are still available to be planted in.
Dani Berger, a Utah State University graduate student, has been heavily involved in this project since the beginning. She said it all started with an old, broken refrigerator the congregation was going to get rid of.
“And we're like, 'How can we use this as a resource to support the community?' And we turned it into this porch pantry, which is just a source of free food for anyone that needs it in the community. They can come to grab it out of the fridge, anonymously, anytime that they want," Berger said.
She said the congregation wanted to do even more.
“And so, then we started to evaluate the other resources we had as a congregation to give back to the community. And we had this old weedy lot next to our building. That's where we started with this idea for Hope Community Garden," Berger said.
The garden features 30 raised garden boxes and 13 freshly planted apple trees next to a community-built gazebo. Beger said they hope to expand to 60 garden boxes by the end of the year.
Berger received the USU Ivory Prize for Excellence in Community Engagement award for her involvement in this community garden, but she doesn’t want all the credit.
“It has taken a community to build this garden and hopefully it is a community that this garden will serve," Berger said.
For the Hope Community Garden Website go to
https://hopegardenlogan.wixsite.com/my-site-1
To fill out an application go to https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEeW_dcjl6drdPRvT2bgDjqS50BR6XA8QVuPBLVzbV_1ksg/viewform
