Written by Edythe Neumann, Highland Community Garden, Abbotsford, BC.
From the garden’s beginnings five years ago, the idea that beautifying our church property by a gardening project would be a benefit and gift both to the church as well as to the broader Highland community – indeed, we felt it would cultivate neighbourliness.
Previously, that end of the church property was an undefined space which had attracted noisy AV vehicles as well as the partying crowd late of a summer’s evening. After we had begun the garden’s development, we were regularly (and still are) met by neighbors on their daily walks, asking questions and exclaiming their enthusiasm about the emerging garden. 
Our fifth growing season is now drawing to a close; we began with 9 gardening plots our first season, and by the next year we had 3 times as many plots developed and spoken for and by the 3rd growing season, 55 plots had been developed. We’ve capped the number of plots at 60 and have been full with a waiting list ever since.
Our spiritual ethos is that the act of gardening may teach us something about ourselves, about our interdependence upon the world of nature, about the relationship between work and creativity, and about how we might begin to discern those spiritual facts that elude us in other aspects of our lives. It is another way to say that God is with us on the earth, a way to picture God’s presence with us – through the gifts of nature and gardening together.
Gardening together has been an expression of community and conversation. Friendships have been formed and many have found the garden setting to be a place of healing and respite. At this year’s September harvest meal, which we’ve enjoyed together each fall since we began, one of our senior gardeners who had recently lost his wife to cancer, expressed to me that since then the garden has been just that for him.
We’ve developed a mission statement that states the intention of being a vibrant gardening community committed to sustainable horticulture and environmental awareness.
Four Goals outlined in our mission statement read as follows:
1) To produce food for use by community garden participants.
2) To model sustainable gardening methods.
3) To enhance the attractiveness of the garden landscape for the enjoyment of gardeners and the local community.
4) To provide a place that encourages harmony with the natural and spiritual world
Learn more at their website.
