Volunteers sought for tending to garden
Saturday is National Make a Difference Day; food, games planned.
Saturday will bring a chance to give back in support of one of Springfield’s newest community assets in recognition of a national effort.
Springfield Promise Neighborhood’s Community Visioning Garden is completing its first year and preparing for the winter season by looking for volunteers to participate in National Make a Difference Day, 9 a.m. to noon Saturday at the garden, located at 1219 Linden Ave.
Volunteers will help with clearing garden beds, tidying and organizing, with the installation of a new retaining wall and a children’s water play wall, painting and other activities.
But it won’t be all work. From noon to 2 p.m., the community is invited to also join in a celebration of a successful initial year with a grill-out with free food including walking tacos and some items from the garden, and there will be games, family activities, live music and more.
“This is a really cool way for people to give back, and we’ll be doing it with others all around the country at the same time,” said Kali Lawrence, Springfield Promise
executive director. “We’ll be wrapping up our first season and get the garden ready for winter.”
One of the activities will be painting boards that will be used to board up abandoned houses in the city. A Lincoln Elementary fourth grade class will be helping with that and others attending can also paint. That project was begun at the recent Art Sofo and is ongoing.
Lawrence was pleased the Visioning Garden harvested 600 pounds of produce from April through October, some of which went to Dreamcity Church and used to serve community meals.
Other food went to Rocking Horse Center for a diabetes nutrition class to show alternative healthy options.
The garden also had several community celebrations to build awareness of the space and opened a food stand on certain Saturdays.
The only disappointing part of the first year was the lack of families interested in maintaining their own garden plot, which they will revisit in 2022.
The garden will do some growing in its raised beds in the green house over the winter and plans are to move forward next spring on next phases, including gaining more participants and possibly adding a sports area in addition to the water walls and retaining wall in making it a community space for families to enjoy.
“This is a contribution for our community, a space to get good food and more,” said Lawrence.
Participants are reminded to dress for the cooler weather, which is predicted to be in the 40s and 50s. For more information, go to www.facebook.com/springfieldpromise.