community | Community Garden Coalition

The Community Garden Coalition has been helping Boone County residents grow healthful produce and develop gardening communities for over 40 years. One of our member gardens that I think epitomizes the ideal of community gardening is the Interfaith Garden.

The coordinators of the Interfaith Garden stand next to their garden sign. — From left: Lily Chan, Noah Heringman, Suzanne Hemmann, Susan DeMian and Brent Lowenberg. Photo credit: Kathy Doisy

Originally, it began in 2006 as the Congregation Beth Shalom (CBS) Community Garden, to provide a service opportunity for students at the CBS school with the harvest donated to the Food Bank. Student volunteers from MU and local secondary schools helped maintain the garden until 2009, when the St. Thomas More Newman Center Parish was asked to help.

For the past decade, this garden has raised and donated an annual average of 1,700 pounds of organic produce to the Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri. Sustaining such a massive effort takes a lot of help!

Volunteers under the leadership of Lily Chan, Susan DeMian, Brent Lowenberg, and Noah Heringman meet 1 to 2 times a week to prepare the beds, plant, weed and harvest. The variety of produce varies with the season, but includes lettuces, spinach, radishes, mustard greens, turnips, beets, chard, kale, snow peas, collards, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, herbs, beans, peas, peppers, tomatoes, okra, squash, cucumber, garlic, walnuts, chestnuts, persimmons, strawberries, grapes, apples, peaches, pears, and rhubarb! If I was a client of the Food Bank, I’d make sure to go on the days that Interfaith delivers!

volunteers crouched down in a row look up at the camera from where they are working at Interfaith Garden

a table set up outside holds fresh-picked produce and Interfaith garden is visible in the background

a table holds baskets of tomatoes, peppers, carrots and other vegetables and fruit

Volunteers come from all over Columbia, but regulars include congregants from Beth Shalom, Newman Center, and our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. Susan and Mike Devaney, Marilyn and Dennis Bettenhausen, and Laura Flacks-Narrol started tomato, pepper, and herb seeds and donated seedlings to the garden. A few MU College of Engineering honor societies, Student Council and Tolton High School seniors offer to volunteer in the garden one to two times a year as their service projects.

volunteers moving mulch at the Interfaith Garden

a group of 20 MU engineering students poses with hand tools in front of the garden

two volunteers from Tolton High School carry fencing material at Interfaith Garden

To achieve this level of success in Boone County takes more than hard work – it requires deer fencing! Interfaith was fenced many years ago with the financial help of the CGC, and plans are in the works to fence in the large orchard that surrounds the fenced vegetable garden. The local deer really like fresh fruit and frequently pick the fruit trees clean!

As the year winds down, please consider supporting Interfaith Garden and the Community Garden Coalition.