In its seventh year, Glenwood’s Giving Garden keeps on giving

It’s the garden that keeps on giving.

Started in 2011, Glenwood’s Giving Garden is on pace to once again provide more than 6,000 pounds of fresh produce to Mills County food pantries, senior citizens and fixed-income residents.

The three-quarter acre garden, located east of Glenwood behind the McCormick Station gift boutique, is managed and maintained by a team of volunteers that do everything  from planting and harvesting to weeding and sorting.

“We’ve had a good core group of volunteers,” Master Gardener Lisa Dytrych said. “What’s nice about the garden is that you can come down here and help pick if you’re able. If you’re not able to pick, you can help us weigh or sort. We have another group that does strictly distribution.”

During the summer, Glenwood’s Giving Garden has established work hours for volunteers – typically Mondays and Wednesdays from 5:30 – 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 8-11 a.m. Volunteers of all ages can volunteer at the garden, but children age 14 and younger must be accompanied by an adult.

The vegetables grown and harvested from the garden are typical for southwest Iowa – radishes, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, squash, sweet corn, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes.

“We try to grow vegetables that are shelf stable and people know what they are and simple to fix,” Dytrych said. “We’ve tried some unusual things - even things like beets - and people didn’t know what to do with them.”

Garden volunteers also share recipes for many of the vegetables they grow.

Dytrych, who was instrumental in getting Glenwood’s Giving Garden off the ground, said the project was patterned after a similar garden established in Omaha to support area food banks.

“I saw an article about a garden in Omaha called the HOPE (Helping Omaha People Eat) Garden.

They gave everything to the food bank in Omaha and I thought, we could do that here in Mills County,” she said. “I brought the idea to Sherry (Ford) at the extension office and we connected with an ISU professor involved with the master gardening program. We’re in our seventh year now. We had a vision for this.”

The success of Glenwood’s Giving Garden has made it a blueprint for similar undertakings being initiated in communities large and small across the state.

“It’s kind of cool that the state of Iowa kind of got on board,” Dytrych said. “That was our hope, that it would just kind of take off and other communities would establish their own gardens.”

In 2016, over 6,200 pounds of produce was harvested and distributed from Glenwood’s Giving Garden. The record for one year is just under 7,000 pounds in 2014. In its first six years, nearly 37,000 pounds of vegetables grown at the garden have been donated to the community.

Dytrych said the garden’s success is a testament to the volunteers and the generosity of June Focken and Carol McCormick, who not only allow the vegetables to be grown on their property, but also provide resources to help the garden prosper.

    Ruth Thieschafer, a three-year volunteer at the garden, said the experience has been rewarding and she encourages others to consider giving time to the project.

“I know I’m doing something good for somebody else,” Thieschafer said.

Glenwood’s Giving Garden has its own Facebook page. Questions about the garden can be directed to Dytrych at 402-830-7770, glenwoodgivinggarden@gmail.com. or ISU Mills County Extension at 712-527-3316.