Community gardening is an essential part of our food security programming. Gardens provide fresh produce for our pantries and are an important tool to help educate clients on healthy eating and engage the community in food security awareness.

Located at the Lutheran Church of Good Shepherd in North Wilmington, this garden is a powerful demonstration of how a community garden can help ground a church in an important ministry, strengthen ties among its members and outreach to its neighbors. What started as a girl scout project with 3 beds, has developed into 7 beds managed by the church and 34 beds for community members, with an automatic irrigation system. Together, they produced more than 3400 pounds of produce for the LCS - St. Stephens pantry location.

This garden is at our Main Office and provides food for that pantry location. Our 13 garden beds are tended by community based garden coordinator, Melody Mason, with the help of other community members and volunteers. 

Melody had previously helped manage a community garden in Chester, PA. She recently completed the Master Gardener program at Penn State Extension. 

“I learned a lot from the LCS garden program and I believe the garden added a special touch to the services that the organization provides. The garden became a place where people felt comfortable and asked a lot of questions related to health, food and more. We are able to produce many pounds of food that adds to the healthy diets of clients. Last year we were blessed to have 90% of our seeds produce. I believe it was great people working together in a good space.”

Coming soon, our Unity Garden will eventually supply the Unity Pantry with a variety of fresh produce.