Folks living in or traveling through the community surrounding Highland Methodist Church in Raleigh, NC on Ridge road, are seeing a delicious view. Garden Supervisor and horticulturist, Cullen Whitley has taken the church’s outreach vision, and along with a dedicated team of volunteers, created a community garden that is educational, functional, and beautiful.
In November 2008, a mission team from Highland United Methodist Church, looked to their own front lawn to help area residents. As a way to help recent immigrants who attended ESL (English as a Second Language) classes at Highland, the church decided to build a community garden as a way for these students to be able to work the soil. Countries represented in the ESL program include Asia, Nepal, Cuba, Pakistan, Vietnam and others. Most are apartment dwellers with no access to garden, building a community garden would help them with a secondary goal as a demonstration garden and a teaching garden.
The vegetable garden has been named “Victory” garden. As Cullen explains, “Victory means something different to each individual. For us, there’s victory in a hard day’s work.” Volunteers are encourage to write what ‘Victory” means to them and put into the mail box. Cullen plans to publish these essays.
Cullen Whitley
The success of Highland’s Victory Garden has lead to interest from 5 other area Methodist churches and a retirement community. Cullen will work with these organizations as they build a Victory gardens on their front lawn.
As you drive by on their Saturday morning work session, stop in and say hey. You will be welcomed with a hearty hello and offered the sweet taste of goodness, cultivated from the soil.
Helen Yoest is a garden writer and coach through her business Gardening with Confidence™.
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Helen also serves on the board of advisors for the JC Raulston Arboretum
I drive past this eyecatching and attractive garden almost every day and have wanted to stop by for a closer look. Thanks so much for this article…. now, I will!
Do stop in Nancy, the gardens are beautiful and the volunteers are so nice and knowledgable. Tell Cullen I said hey!
What a great story and an excellent idea.
This garden has been a blessing to all of us who have worked hard to establish it. I have have had wonderful visits with folks who just drop by to walk in the garden. The children have been especially drawn to see how vegetbles grow. Thanks so much for your article.