The place where hope grows
Story by Paul South
Photos by Mandy Baughn
From an acre of God’s good earth, a small army of volunteers at Pell City Community Garden helps feed the hungry
Ten years ago, Renee Lilly and like-minded people had a vision for a place where hope and fresh food grew for the food insecure.
On the old Avondale Mills property in Pell City, Lilly wanted to create a space where needy folks could learn to tend a small piece of God’s good earth and grow their own herbs, fruits and vegetables.
Two years later, Pell City’s Gateway Community Garden and its small army of volunteers moved to an acre or more of land donated by St. Simon Peter Episcopal Church across the road from the church.
The result? A bumper harvest, not just of fresh food, but of hope. The garden, Lilly said, has exceeded expectations.
When the garden began at Avondale, the hope was to inexpensively rent out plots to individuals to allow them to grow their own food. But there were few takers.
Two years later the effort moved to the church and the mission changed direction.
“We just decided, we’ll grow the food, and we’ll just distribute that food to the people who need it,” Lilly said. “Once we made that decision, everything just took off.”
Since 2018, the garden has produced more than 14,000 pounds of fresh food for county residents in need, Lilly said.
Volunteers – the number varies, but usually there is a core group of a dozen – tend, nurture, harvest and distribute seasonal fresh foods.
More have joined the effort. In fact, some 3,500 volunteer hours have been sown into the garden since 2018.
The work is vital, especially in a county where 13 percent of residents are food insecure, according to U.S. News and World Report.
“Boy Scouts have helped us. We’ve got the Boys and Girls Clubs, and other groups have helped us,” Lilly said.
Because the garden has been so successful, and because of its partnership with the Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama, it has been designated as one of 16 “Open Spaces, Sacred Places” sites located in nine Alabama counties.
Those sites are “intended for the encouragement of community well-being and resilience of mind/body/spirit of both individuals and communities,” according to the Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama website.
“Our garden is one of those sacred spots. It’s an incredible thing that we have that here,” Lilly said.
For Lilly, certain things make the garden sacred.
“It’s a healing and restorative garden,” she said. “Not only is it a working garden where we are harvesting chemical-free food out of that garden. We also have an area in nature where people can come and sit. We have a bench with a little book library, and there’s a picnic table in the nature area where people can come and reflect on the beauty of the garden.”
The garden wouldn’t happen without the collaboration with the Community Foundation and St. Simon Peter, as well as corporate and individual support, Lilly said.
Though a secular organization, Gateway’s work dovetails with the mission of the church by feeding the mind, body and spirit of those in need. “We’re serving people,” Lilly said.
The garden’s harvest changes with the season. This fall, cabbage, kale, Brussel sprouts, broccoli and Swiss chard made up the crop. In past years, collards were a fall staple.
Herbs – parsley, thyme, basil and mint among them – call the garden home.
What does the success of the Gateway Community Garden say about the people of St. Clair County?
“What it says was that there was a core group of people who decided that it would be nice for Pell City to have a community garden that could take care of people in need,” Lilly said. “I think that core group of people spread the wealth, if you will, with their hard work, and more people have joined that mission.”
There is a commonality they share.
“There is a love for serving and a love for gardening.”
Recent evidence of that growth, a woman who is a master gardener enlisted her green thumb in the garden’s efforts. Some volunteers are masters, others are newcomers to putting their hand to the soil.
“We have new people coming in and joining us all the time,” Lilly said.
One of the beneficiaries of the garden is a local senior center, where food is distributed. More than once, encounters with local seniors have assured Lilly that her vision was spot on.
“A lot of times, we get to see their faces when the food is brought in,” Lilly said. “They love it. They get all excited, and they run over to us to see what we’ve brought. It’s an awesome thing.”
Lilly recalled one senior who needed food during the Covid-19 pandemic. She was driving a vanload of cabbage.
“Would you like a head of cabbage?,” she asked the man.
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he replied.
“You just put it in a pan with water, salt and pepper and cook it, and it’s awesome. You’ll love it,” Lilly answered. Cabbage may have won a new fan that day.
The problems of the underprivileged are often misunderstood or dismissed outright. Lilly sometimes hears that the reason her cadre of volunteers is not as large as it could be is “because they don’t want to distribute food to lazy people.”
As the product of a broken home that faced food insecurity, she bristled at the notion.
“I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, there are a lot of people who aren’t lazy who are just in situations out of their control. I understand people who are going through a divorce or they lose a spouse, or somebody gets sick, there are all kinds of situations where people need help,’” Lilly said. “That’s why we have been distributing healthy food to people in need since 2014.”
Along with its cultivation efforts, Gateway Community Garden celebrated its third annual fundraiser earlier this month. In exchange for a $20 donation, donors were given the opportunity to win a chest freezer full of beef and pork. Chili, white and red gave extra flavor to the event, along with live music. Polly Warren prepared the beef chili and Wade Reich of the popular barbecue eatery, “Butts To Go,” prepared white chicken chili.
Back in 2014, if someone had told Lilly that the garden would flower into a success, there may have been a few weeds of skepticism.
“I would have probably said, ‘I know it’s going to take a lot of hard work. But I would have never thought that it would be the place that it is today.’”
She added, “It’s an awesome space, and we do good work there.” l
