Carefully walking between rows of sprouting plants, Donavan Lawrence gives a tour of the St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church community garden in Derby, Kansas.
The caretaker points out the spiral-shaped herb garden and elevated plots for people with mobility issues. He stops by a group of raised mounds where the church is using a technique called the three sisters.
It’s an indigenous technique where corn, pole beans and squash sustain each other on one plot.
“When you set things up correctly, they can all benefit from each other and help support each other,” Lawrence said.
After a pause, he considers that the growing method is a metaphor for their garden.
“We're hoping at this community garden that we can all support one another,” Lawrence said. “We can all start working on having a better relationship with our community, with one another, supporting one another and leaning on each other's strengths.”
The church’s Refugium Community Garden is in its second year in Derby. The garden takes its name from pockets of mild climate where plants survived during the Ice Age.
St. Andrew’s members also maintain two beehives on the grounds. They’re working on collecting runoff rainwater from the church building to water the garden. And they grow vegetables for salads for Breakthrough Wichita, an organization that helps individuals with mental health issues.
As grocery prices rise, and federal food aid funding falls, some Kansas groups are turning to community gardens to help combat food insecurity.
Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture canceled programs helping food banks and schools buy local produce.
“I’m hoping that this community garden can be a place where we can help fill those needs that people might have now that some of those programs they have depended on might be being cut,” Lawrence said.
According to Wichita’s Hunger Free Kansas, one in seven Kansans are struggling with food insecurity. That number is only expected to rise.
The organization works with a wide variety of public agencies to end hunger. Executive Director Erika Debrick Kelly said community gardens are a good start, but they are just part of the solution. They work best when paired with other programs like government food assistance or Meals on Wheels.
“A community garden itself is unlikely to provide all of the nutrition that a family or an individual needs to maintain their overall health,” Debrick Kelly said. “So community gardens should often be looked at as a supplement.”
Community gardens can be a flexible option for fighting food insecurity, Debrick Kelly said. They can be grown by food banks that have available land. But they can also thrive on rooftops, at schools and even inside correctional facilities. Gardens can scale to the size of land.
Karen Couch, executive director of the Salina Emergency Aid Food Bank, said their community garden is one of their several programs to help reduce food insecurity.
The organization has maintained a garden since 2019. Their organic garden has plots for the public, children and people with mobility issues. Cabbage, squash, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini are just some of the produce growing.
Couch said giving people the opportunity to grow their own food helps them explore healthy eating.
“Rising grocery prices are causing a lot of folks to have to cut back, to look towards the more processed or packaged products,” Couch said. “Having access to what I call ‘real food,’ and knowing that you can easily improve your health by growing food that is good for you is amazing.”
In addition to healthier habits, Couch said gardens also promote education. They bring in experts from the Kansas State University Extension Office to help new gardeners.
Children also benefit from finding out where their food comes from. At their garden, Couch said kids who otherwise might not love asparagus are excited to pull it out of the ground and chew on it.
“Even though we are in the middle of Kansas, oftentimes kids don't realize that the zucchini or the other vegetables that they may get from the grocery store actually comes from the ground,” Couch said. ”It’s been a great gift to be able to help at a young age to get that education started and to plant those seeds."
Community gardens face challenges though. People might not be familiar with how to grow produce, or lack a green thumb. And there’s start-up costs associated with the gardens.
Hunger Free is helping with these challenges by offering mini-grant opportunities to help organizations with start-up costs. Debrick Kelly said the more gardens they can start, the more they can share successful techniques across the state.
“We are trying to learn from those examples and how we can take those best practices and really scale them across the state,” she said.
Community gardens are also finding ways around the traditional growing season. In Salina, Couch said they’ve started a hydroponic garden tower in their lobby.
“We hope we can continue to expand and provide maybe some year-round locally grown produce from the food bank.”
For some gardeners, part of the solution to Kansas food insecurity is in turning back to the state’s agricultural roots.
“I think we should take pride in the fact that we are an agricultural state and that the soil is important to us,” Couch said. “If we go back to our roots and our history to look at what pioneers did, we could take a sense of pride in the fact that this is local. It's grown here.”
Debrick Kelly said by taking those lessons from the past, Kansas can demonstrate a way forward.
“This is actually a problem and a challenge that exists that is truly solvable, and Kansas can be a leader in the country in doing that,” Debrick Kelly said. “I truly believe that we can end hunger in the state of Kansas.”
Roger Nomer reports from the Wichita area for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at nomer@kmuw.org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio.
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