Summit Avenue church in St. Paul hopes to send a message: ‘Feed the poor’
Posted 24 April 2011, by Rubén Rosario, TwinCities.com, twincities.com
The Rev. David Van Dyke of the House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul sounded the other day very much like the dreamy-eyed lead character of the classic ‘Field of Dreams.’
“We want it to be quite pleasing from the street and the sidewalk,” Van Dyke tells me as we stand on a 1,500-square-foot section of grass on one of the front lawns of the 97-year-old Gothic church.
“What do we do with the grass?” he responds. “Nothing. We just mow it. From an aesthetic point of view, who’s to say that green grass is somehow prettier than a beautiful garden with flower beds?”
Welcome to House of Hope’s Field of Greens. But unlike the movie’s baseball field, this garden will be built right smack on one of the most historic and toniest thoroughfares in town — Summit Avenue. If built, there would be nothing quite like it along that wide boulevard of stately mansions.
“One of the things about putting it here is that it serves as a public witness to this in terms of what we are doing and why — that there are hungry people right here in our own neighborhood and community and it’s an opportunity for neighbors to help neighbor,” Van Dyke said.
Pending approval from the city’s historic preservation committee, the church’s garden at 797 Summit Ave. is designed to provide fresh produce for up to 15 families through a partnership with Neighborhood House’s basic needs program.
“We are especially excited,” said Sarah Yang, who runs the program at Neighborhood
House, a West Side social services agency. “They know that fresh produce is a great demand in our food shelf. We never have enough of it.”
The House of Hope effort plans to help fill a midweek fresh-produce gap during the summer growing season. Neighborhood House weekly collects about 1,000 pounds of leftover produce from the St. Paul Farmers’ Market. The yield is given to 60 families in a two-day period, each receiving about 15 pounds in addition to their nonperishable food.
The food shelf serves 30 to 32 families on typical days, giving away 3,000 pounds of food.
“House of Hope’s community garden would greatly benefit our families on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays when we don’t have much fresh produce,” Yang said.
GARDEN IDEA TAKES ROOT
The community-garden idea took root during a meeting a few months ago of the church’s outreach ministry committee.
“We thought it was a fabulous idea, and putting it right on Summit was a great way to highlight the need,” said Mary Senkbeil, the committee chair. The church folks asked the food shelf folks, whose clientele is 40 percent immigrant or ethnically diverse, what to grow.
Tomatillos, chayote, mustard greens, collards, hot and sweet peppers, sweet basil
The House of Hope Garden design.and lemongrass were among staples added to the produce list.
The Permaculture Research Institute for Cold Climate, a Minneapolis firm, was hired to come up with a design for the community garden that would look pleasing and also accomplish its humanitarian mission.
“The gardens are intensively designed using permaculture design principles to maximize crop production but also build soil, use water efficiently and provide habitat for beneficial insects,” said Paula Westmoreland, the garden’s designer and the firm’s demonstration designer.
The plan includes pollination gardens designed to mirror the braided pattern in the building’s Gothic architecture. They are planted with flowers and grasses that will attract pollinators such as butterflies and provide a home for beneficial insects and beauty along the garden edge.
The north fence will have trellises to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, pole beans, squash and other vining crops. The south fence will be bordered with junipers and grasses to “increase the aesthetic appeal,” according to the design blueprint.
Westmoreland said the church effort, given the locale, is unique.
“This can become a model for other congregations who’d like to do the same,” she said.
The design calls for a transparent 3-foot-high fence to keep those dastardly rabbits out. But it will be open to the public and have strawberry plants on its slope “so that people walking by can just pick and eat them,” Van Dyke said. He added that part of the partnership would encourage the food-shelf beneficiaries to volunteer and help plant the garden.
“We don’t want this to be just a church thing,” he said as he looked out onto Summit Avenue from the lawn. “It’s a community thing that I hope will turn some heads.”
I could almost hear someone whispering to the pastor as he spoke: “If you build it, they will eat.”
Rubén Rosario can be reached at 651-228-5454 or rrosario@pioneerpress.com.
