Church gardens help to grow the community — along with food — with bountiful rewards.

That green connection between food and people is key for Megan Rancier, with Maumee Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Bowling Green, and the church’s garden.

“For the amount of work you put into it, you get an exponential kind of return. It’s great for communities. It’s great for the environment,” Rancier said.

First Presbyterian Church of Bowling Green also has a garden.

“God is green. It’s a miracle,” said Corky Dunsmore of First Presbyterian. “A tomato seed is small, the size of a freckle, and it grows up so big, and you get these big, huge, juicy sweet things out of it. That’s a miracle.

“I do the technical streaming thing at the church, because it’s needed. I do the gardening, because that’s where I feel closest to God, with my hands on the plants and in the dirt and my feet, very often, running around barefoot.”

Lyn Long started the community garden idea at the Presbyterian church almost 10 years ago. Two years ago Dunsmore began coordinating the gardening at the current location.

Dunsmore is retired, as a potter, but also has a teaching background in youth development. She has been gardening for more than 40 years, now also with a 30-foot by 40-foot garden at home.

The church has nine raised beds located behind the church, off South Grove Street. They are not to be mistaken for the flower beds that are in the front church annex, or the butterfly garden on the north side, next to Wooster Green. The flower garden has been there longer than anyone can remember.

The most important need for a garden, other than people to work them, is space with sun.

Both Maumee Valley and First Presbyterian volunteers chose raised gardens, for the quality of the soil and drainage.

“We had this big wonderful area with lots of sunshine, and I thought it would be wonderful for a garden,” Dunsmore said.

The beds sit where the old junior high school was, and the soil is now rocky with old concrete. But that location was still better than their first garden location.

“It’s even better than the spot we gave away, where the senior center now has a parking lot, because we couldn’t get water to that, without physically carrying it across the street,” she said.

The beds can now be watered with hoses, as the church has water spigots.

Everyone has their own box, except for the box tended by the students at Work Leads to Independence, which has a classroom at the church. The gardeners each help the other. Some, like Dunsmore, have been doing it for years, while others just started this season.

The beds are 4 feet wide and 8 feet long. They used 2×12 boards, instead of the more common 1x12s, for the added durability. They also have a 4-foot square compost pile.

“When you shut down the garden you now have all the plant stuff and throwing it away is no good. It’s the ultimate recycling,” said Dunsmore, wearing a T-shirt printed with “Make compost, not war.”

During the interview she was picking chamomile flowers, which will become tea. It is one of the many herbs they grow, including basil, oregano, lemon thyme, mint, English thyme, chives, sage, savory, marjoram, parsley, dill, lavender and garlic.

Other beds have vegetables, including corn, squash, tomatoes and carrots.

On North Dixie Highway, Megan Rancier helps to manage the community gardens at the Unitarian Congregation, along with Hannah McAbee.

Rancier is an associate teaching professor at Bowling Green State University in ethnomusicology.

The Unitarian Congregation has half a dozen members involved in their gardens, which started in 2020 during the pandemic. They began with two raised beds and are now up to four.

“It was partly that Hannah had wanted to do a church garden for a long time, and then during the pandemic we had lots more flexibility,” Rancier said. “We were definitely more isolated and needed to get outside and do something fun and useful. The garden seemed to check all those boxes.”

Rancier and McAbee have done a service about the benefits of gardening, followed by a blessing of the gardens.

“We talked about how the garden creates so many positive effects on a community. It becomes a gathering place. It becomes a place where you work together. It becomes a group project and a source of solace and something to focus on when other things are bothering you,” Rancier said. “Of course, there’s the end result. You can share the veggies and flowers with the community.”

Like their friends at the Presbyterian church, the Unitarian Congregation shares their bounty internally, but also donates to places like the Brown Bag Food Project.

Rancier said that having some money when first starting is helpful, but even with building raised beds a $100 should be enough. She is adamant about investing in one thing.

“Invest in fencing, because the critters will always try to get in,” Rancier said. “Also, make sure it’s a group effort and delegate responsibilities. Make sure people show up. Honestly, it’s just more fun when you have more people involved and it helps to distribute the work more evenly.”