Several Churches have taken up the challenge of starting gardens on Church land.
St Michaels in Harare has a vegetable garden running at St Michaels School in Harare. Several of the young people from the church have been able to earn a basic living from working at the garden. They donate vegetables to the Church for big functions.
Holy Cross in Nyanga has been running a veggie garden for several years, five people are employed there and they provide vegetables for the daily soup kitchen run at the church under the hard work and vision of Sisi Zuki.
St Peters in Khayelitsha is interested to start a new vegetable garden at the main church as well as to revive the garden then used to have with flowers so that they don’t have to buy flowers for church services. At their outstation in Site C, they are looking to start a model garden – showing individuals how to grow small back yard vegetables.
Members of these gardens as well as other individuals interested in learning more skills for their own vegetable or herb garden joined the four day greening workshop being hosted by the Edith Stephens Wetland Park (City of Cape Town) during the month of October 2015 in Lansdown road in Phillippi. Vathiswa Manentsa told of how she has been helped by natural remedies and would love to grow them herself to help the community with health challenges. The Green Anglican team is wanting to improve the garden at the Provincial Office.
The course had an international flavor as well as we were joined by Kirsty Hollow a volunteer from St Pauls and St Georges Church in Edinburgh, Scotland. (We didn’t mention the rugby , honest)
They learned skills in Environmental awareness, local biodiversity, eco-friendly activities, permaculture practices and landscaping plan drawing. They also learned how to propagate new plants by taking cuttings.
Each day we started with a devotion, learning about the Scriptures that talk about gardening and we learned that God was the first gardener. So if we are made in God’s image, creating and growing things should be part of who we are and what we do.
At the end of the course all participants were given certificates in completion of the course. A delicious lunch was served by local caterer from IGorha caterers, Phila Mpangeva and Xolani Meshack, who took off their gardening gloves and donned catering aprons to show how multi-talented they are!
Lwandile Bada