Kara McKee remembers the reaction when she first proposed planting a community garden in front of Food and Shelter for Friends on James Garner Avenue just south of Main Street.
"Everybody said, 'People are going to come steal your vegetables,'" said McKee, who began working at FSFF in April. "I said, 'They can't steal them, they're already free.'"
The verdant, organic community garden has yielded everything from herbs to pumpkins this year, thanks to a large variety of helpers and organizations that donated materials.
Many plants or seeds were donated by Prairie Wind Nursery, the Oklahoma Food Bank and the Redbud Housing Coop.
And the Norman Sustainability Network provided bricks that surround the garden and labor to dig it. Free compost came from the City of Norman.
Local construction workers who were helping remodel the FSFF offices brought them a flat of fuchsia-colored periwinkles that livened up the garden on the street side.
"It's a real source of pride," McKee said.
The garden is still looking good before the first frost as a result of several plants going in relatively late in the season. Homemade trellises were built with bamboo and are now covered with beans. Another will be covered with peas.
The garden's produced a bounty of tomatoes, peppers and butternut squash.
"We got a really good late harvest," she said.
Several kinds of basil were planted, including Thai and Genovese.
And there is a mound of sweet potato leaves from plants that they hope will yield sweet potatoes when they dig them up.
Cool-weather vegetables will continue into the fall, including lettuces, spinach, mustard, radishes, turnips and carrots.
"We're planning on gardening all the way through the fall," McKee said. "Just covering it with plastic."
Food and Shelter for Friends serves Norman's homeless and low-income populations. The organization serves nutritious lunches and breakfasts to anyone who wants to eat there.
The agency's community garden reminds McKee of hearing her grandmother talk about her gardens when she was growing up.
"My grandmother always said they were poor, but they didn't know it because they always had enough to eat," she said.
McKee said she finds a lot of FSFF clients find a sense of solace in the garden. Several clients help weed and maintain it.
She said she is hopeful that some of the Cleveland County Master Gardeners who generously bring FSFF their extra vegetables might be coerced into teaching classes next spring to some of their clients about how to establish their own gardens.
And McKee also said they plan to build a hoop house, which is "somewhere in between a cold frame and a greenhouse." They are looking for donations of about $1,000 to help build the structure and have an engineer who has volunteered to help build it.
Carol Cole-Frowe 366-3538 ccole@normantranscript.com
Local news
Community garden brings plentiful result
Food and Shelter for Friends benefits from effort
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