Highland Methodist Church

Highland Methodist Church Victory Garden

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.