Growing community garden has a place for everyone

After years of labor to make the Homewood City Schools community garden a reality, Julie Gentry is seeing the fruits — and vegetables — of her labor.

Potatoes, okra and sunflowers flourish alongside peach trees and raised beds of strawberries, basil and eggplant. A pollination garden has attracted bees, hummingbirds and butterflies. Gentry’s favorite part, though, is seeing children and the entire community play a part in the garden’s success.

“I love having different parts of the community come by and participate,” Gentry said. “That’s a real point of pride, just how many people have worked so hard on so much of it.”

The garden, located at 1108 Frisco Street next to the future Board of Education building, is a community effort in the truest sense of the word. Local Boy Scouts have built a tool shed and information kiosk for the garden, while BB&T Bank helped fund and build some of the community beds. State Rep. Paul DeMarco helped Gentry get a grant to install a cistern, which collects rainwater and provides a year-round water supply. Arnie Rutkis, a local landscaper, built the pollination garden, and students in shop classes have crafted bluebird houses and cold frames to protect the garden during winter. 

“A lot of people feel like, ‘I’m not really into gardening, so there’s nothing for me to do out here,’” Gentry said. “It takes all of us to make it work, not just the gung-ho gardeners.”

Homewood’s schoolchildren also use the garden as an outdoor classroom. They learn about composting, plant care and sustainability as they taste and take home the produce they grow. Gentry enjoys seeing the children’s wonder as they taste a strawberry for the first time or put a potato in their pocket to take home.

“They’re overwhelmed when you say, ‘Yes, that is your potato.’ And they start talking about recipes, and it starts a whole conversation that middle schoolers don’t normally have,” Gentry said.

Some of the garden’s produce also makes its way to the school lunchrooms. Gentry recalled a pasta salad that received rave reviews from students and teachers because of the garden’s rosemary.

“They harvest enough herbs that sometimes they’re used in all five of the schools,” Gentry said. “When stuff can make it to all five lunchrooms, I’m pretty excited.”

However, even Gentry has been surprised by teachers’ ingenuity in using the garden. Homewood Middle School family and consumer sciences teacher Briana Morton’s eighth-grade class started a business called the Magic City Juice Bar and sold juices made from the garden’s crops. Morton and fellow middle school’s eighth-grade science teacher, Molly Knudsen, started a free summer “seed to table” program funded by the Homewood City Schools Foundation. Fifteen students participated in June, working in the garden in the mornings and cooking in the afternoon.

“I’m really happy for those kids. To have that kind of opportunity in your neighborhood, for free, that’s just a dream come true for that space to be used like that,” Gentry said. “I’m so proud of [them] for pulling that off.”

The garden has expanded to accommodate its many new purposes. With help from Garner Stone, three new handicap-accessible stone beds were installed earlier this year. The beds will produce more food for lunchrooms, including cucumbers, edamame, pumpkins and cantaloupes. Gentry recently planted corn and blackberry bushes as well. Bark for a Park donated some leftover funds to install a dog waste disposal station in the open areas near the garden, where people frequently walk their dogs.

Gentry also has big plans for the garden’s future, including a pavilion, more community beds and a second cistern. She would like to install a small windmill to teach about wind energy and get students on the robotics teams to build a solar-powered cistern pump. Once construction is finished on the new Board of Education building, Gentry wants to add a walking trail and use more land to teach children about larger crops such as soybeans, cotton and sugar cane. 

“We’re going to have more green space than we know what to do with,” Gentry said. “It’s a rare [problem] for a community garden to have.”

No matter how the garden grows, though, Gentry’s focus will remain on teaching the children who visit and enriching the entire community.

“That has a value that we don’t even know,” Gentry said.

The garden’s next community work day has been postposed from its original Saturday, July 12 date. The rescheduled date will be announced soon. To learn more, email hcsgarden@gmail.com.