Volunteers grow vegetables for Shepherds’ soup kitchen

Growing organic vegetables to feed people in need is a labour of love for a dedicated group of Ottawa gardeners.

About 15 volunteers toil in the soil of Hope Garden throughout the spring, summer and fall, nurturing tiny seeds into shoots and leaves, then harvesting the bounty for the Shepherds of Good Hope’s soup kitchen.

Barbara Harris has been at the garden’s helm for 10 years. Looking for a way to give back to her community after retiring, Harris started volunteering with the Shepherds of Good Hope in 2003. Soon the lifelong gardener was asked to take over the plots in the Kilborn Allotment Gardens on Pleasant Park Road.

“I feel I’m gaining more being here than I’m giving,” Harris says, standing in the garden and surrounded by the rich smells of earth and onions. “To be out here, it’s a wonderful feeling. Clear, clean air. Birds chirping. I just love it. It’s my passion.”

Harris keeps track of the garden’s every detail using charts and maps to show everything from which plants are in each of the tidy rows to how many hours volunteers spend weeding and watering.

As the plants ripen, they’re harvested and taken to the soup kitchen downtown. Harris hangs a plastic bag full of tomatoes off a portable scale to demonstrate how she keeps track of the yield.

“Nine pounds, nine ounces,” she declares.

This year, by July 31, Hope Garden had provided 847 pounds of vegetables.

The garden wasn’t always so impeccably organized, however.

It was snowing on April 1, 2004, when Harris first saw the six plots she’d agreed to manage. Beneath the thin blanket of white, she could tell there was a lot of work ahead.

“We took a look at it and it was full of weeds, because (the previous managers) didn’t have enough volunteers to help them,” she says.

Harris decided to ask her new crop of gardeners to each take responsibility for a particular vegetable.

“That made all the difference. Because then they keep those rows weeded themselves,” says Harris, who is in charge of the tomatoes.

While some people volunteer for a single season, others, such as Gerda Schwartz, come back year after year.

The Hope Garden volunteers invite people to come to the Kilborn Allotment Gardens on Saturday, Aug. 17 to see their work. The seventh annual Hope Garden Party will feature music, refreshments and a garden quiz. For more information, call 613-789-8210, ext. 228.