Marden charity community garden needs more helping hands

MARDEN – A community garden focused on growing produce donated to food security organizations is looking for a few more volunteers to increase how much they can give back and they’re giving preference to volunteers from Wellington County. 

On about 8,000 square feet of land at the Grace Community Church property in Marden right now is mostly a bunch of plots of dirt but will soon blossom with garlic, leafy greens, tomatoes, zucchini, beans, peas and other produce all gardening season long.

This land is the GROW Community Garden, a volunteer-run garden associated with the Guelph Tool Library that donates the food grown to places like the Guelph Food Bank, Centre Wellington Food Bank, Hope House or Chalmers Community Services.

Last year, GROW co-chair Caroline Prochazka said they donated over 400 pounds of produce to different organizations even during a cool and damp summer that wasn’t ideal for gardening.

“I’ve never had anybody receive a donation that wasn’t full ear-to-ear smile and appreciative,” Prochazka said. “It reminds us that not everybody’s got the same resources and I think that it’s one way of giving.”

It’s not without its rewards. Beyond giving gardeners a chance to give back those who volunteer their time get their own plot at the garden to grow for themselves. 

“We have a lot of tending tasks so we need a few more volunteers to keep that running smoothly through the summer,” Prochazka said. 

That’s what the GROW volunteers are focusing on in March, finding more volunteers. To begin, they are primarily focused on finding volunteers who live in Wellington County as most of the 11 volunteers are from Guelph to bring more of a connection to the area the garden is actually in. 

Volunteers are needed for all sorts of tasks like filling water tanks, watering the beds, weeding, trimming the pathways and harvesting. People should be able to commit to one or two hours every week. 

“It’s not too much but it also doesn’t go far,” Prochazka said. “If everyone comes out for an hour, it’s fantastic but if it starts getting hard to get out to the garden, then you see the weeds grow really fast … so it takes a little bit of consistency.”

Those interested don’t necessarily need to have existing gardening skills but acknowledged it might be difficult to bring people out to teach them as schedules don’t always match each other.

“I like the mornings, other people like the evenings, I can’t do weekends, other people like weekends,” Prochazka said. “I think there was an aspiration to be a teaching venue but we have a hard time figuring out how to enact that. We wouldn’t say no to someone who doesn’t have gardening experience if they’ve got the time to commit.”

Those interested in volunteering with the GROW Community Garden can apply online here to potentially be invited for an interview. Priority will be given to Wellington County residents until March 30.