Helping harvest: Community garden membership drive Saturday

Published 9:12 am Friday, August 4, 2017

Nestled next to the Mill Village at Avondale on Comer Avenue, Pell City’s Gateway Community Garden has a clear mission, ’to create education and awareness around how to grow, prepare, and add healthy food choices into the diets of the city’s residents.’

This Saturday evening, the community garden will be holding a membership drive at Lilly Designs in downtown Pell City.

“It means the world to us to eat fresh and healthy. I’m a cancer survivor, and I have gone back to growing my own food,” said local resident Demetria June Bogs. “I think this is a plus for our community.”

The garden’s impact goes beyond educating individuals—it provides food to those in need within the community. A variety of fresh produce is grown, from bell peppers and cantaloupe to okra and tomatoes. 

The latest two groups to benefit from the garden’s humanitarian efforts were the Pell City Senior Center, also located on Comer Ave., and the Christian Love Pantry. Approximately 18 pounds of produce were collected for each group during the last two harvests. 

The garden rotates their donations with each collection, currently between the Center, the Pantry, Goodworks Charitable Foundation, and Fish & Loaves Ministries, all in Pell City. 

The Pell City’s community garden currently harvests about twice a month currently, but it could be more. 

“We definitely need volunteers. Right now it’s just the board members coming out,” said Amanda Jo Wright, co-vice president of the Gateway Community Garden’s board with Renee Lilly of Lilly Designs. “We could harvest every week if we had more volunteers—meaning we could help more people. And there is definitely a need for what we’re doing in Pell City.” 

Pell City’s Gateway Community Garden will hold their membership drive on Saturday, Aug. 5 from 5-9 p.m. at Lilly Designs, 1917 Cogswell Ave., Pell City.

“I look forward to seeing it grow in the years to come, and be larger than what it is now—everybody pitching in and helping out with this,” concluded Bogs.

For more information on the community garden, located at 598 Comer Ave., Pell City, visit pcgarden.wixsite.com/gatewaygarden, find them on Facebook or call Community Garden Board President Mary Taylor at (205) 505-9291.