Come Garden with Us!

The St. Nicholas “Good News” Community Garden is open!

Anyone who would like to garden with us this year, please call/text Fran at 302-438-3359. Plots are 10 x 10 ft for $40 rental fee payable to “St. Nicholas’ Church”.

Space is available on a first come, first serve basis.

No gardening experience needed. We welcome first time growers of all ages.

2024 Community Garden Grant Award

Gratefully, our Community Garden was awarded $2989 for a “Garden Infrastructure Improvements Grant” by the New Castle Conservation District. This grant will help us make needed repairs and purchase garden supplies, plants, and equipment for a more productive growing season this year and years to come. It will also help us extend the growing season, engage more growers, and beautify our community garden.  Volunteers are needed to help in and around the garden.

2024 Community Garden Wish List

1. Carpenter/handyperson to repair weathered raised bed frames
2. Handyperson to assemble and install animal barrier gate kits around raised garden beds
3. Handyperson to troubleshoot rain barrel drip irrigation system.
4. Garden hand tools, hose, wheelbarrow, and utility carts; new or gently used.
5. Delaware native pollinator plants to attract bees and butterflies.
6. Mulch and pavers for garden pathways.
7. Produce weight scale (mechanical or digital)
8. Donations of vegetable, fruit and flower seedlings and seeds
9. Garden newsletter and social media reporters and editors
10. Gift cards to garden centers, The Home Depot or Lowes

History of Our Community Garden

Established in 2011, our Community Garden has grown in size, productivity, community participation and food distribution. It began as a parish garden with church volunteer growers and food recipients. In 2016 we were honored to be awarded one of the first eleven Delaware Department of Agriculture Urban Agriculture and Community Garden micro grants by Governor Jack Markell. In 2019 we were granted funds to install our rain barrel drip irrigation system, expand the main garden to 64’ x 34’ and include more children in summer garden activities.

During COVID food from our garden fed more at Hope Dining Room and others who literally “helped themselves” to the harvest in the dark of night or plain sight. This is when we learned to recognize and respond to the panic of hunger and food insecurity in our own neighborhood. The Garden was also a safe outside worship and general meeting space that kept our congregation going.

In 2022 we were able to conduct public meetings to discuss the future of our garden and larger green space with key stakeholders, install fencing, more raised beds, open an additional 30’ x 10’ plot and increase donated produce to 450 lbs. donated to Hope and Emmanuel Dining Rooms.  Despite another rather difficult growing season in 2023, our Grow to Share production was estimated at over 300 lbs. Nine months out of the past year we sent our fresh or cooked vegetables to feed 20-50 people at the Hope Dining Room in Brookside, DE. Produce was also shared with the congregation on Sunday mornings and the Emmanuel Dining Room in Wilmington, DE. Several Sundays a rainbow of flowers grown in our garden were used in altar and narthex arrangements. We also joined the Episcopal Church of the USA Good News Garden Network. Creation Care is a key ministry of The Episcopal Church.

Good News Gardens Movement

The mission of the Good News Gardens movement, as led by The Episcopal Church, is to partner with people in transformational agrarian ministry that feeds body, mind, and spirit. Good News Gardens is a church-wide movement of individuals, congregations, schools, colleges, seminaries, monasteries, camps and conference centers involved in a variety of food and creation care ministries – gardening, farming, beekeeping, composting, gleaning, feeding, food justice advocacy. The list goes on and on. Collectively Good News Gardens share their abundance, their prayers, and the Way of Love in their communities and beyond.

Our Call 

As the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement, we believe that we called to follow Jesus Christ and his way of love, growing in faith and action, in order that we can bear witness to his way of love in and for the world. We believe that one place we can bear witness to this love is through our relationship with the land. We believe that when we commit to planting more (be it beehives or herb gardens,) praying more (with our words and our deeds) and proclaiming more (through our stories and our bounty) to share the loving, liberating, and life-giving Good News of God’s love with all people, we will find ourselves, our church, and our world transformed.