One Year in the Garden at St Dunstan’s
For years, we talked about having a community garden at St. Dunstan’s. We imagined what it might look like to take a piece of our property and turn it into a place where something could grow, not only for us, but for our wider community. Like many good ideas, it lived for a while in conversations, hopes, and dreams.
Then Scarborough Centre for Healthy Communities approached us, and suddenly that dream began to take shape. What if we could grow fresh, healthy food right here at St. Dunstan’s and share it with our neighbours through SCHC? What had once been an idea began to become a possibility.
With the generous help of the Centennial Community and Recreation Association (CCRA), Faith & the Common Good, a TD Friends of the Environment Foundation grant, and Scott’s Canada, that possibility became a reality in the fall of 2025. We prepared the garden beds, brought in soil, planted, watered, weeded, and waited. Slowly, the garden began to come alive.
Now, one year later, it is hard not to marvel at what has grown.
And it is not only the vegetables that have grown.
Over the past year, members of the St. Dunstan’s community, young and old, newer members and those who have been part of our parish for many years, have spent time cultivating the gardens. Community partners have joined us as well. There have been mornings of planting and watering, afternoons of weeding and tending, and plenty of conversations along the way. The garden has become a place where people come together, work together, and share in the simple joy of watching something grow.
This summer, that growth has been particularly abundant. Lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, okra, beans, cucumbers, and more have made their way from our garden to the clients of Scarborough Centre for Healthy Communities. What a joy it has been to see the harvest move beyond our garden beds and into the hands and homes of our neighbours.
There is something deeply satisfying about growing food and sharing it with others. Perhaps it is because gardening reminds us of something that Scripture has told us all along: we are dependent upon gifts we cannot manufacture for ourselves. We prepare the soil, plant the seeds, water and weed, but ultimately we receive the miracle of growth as a gift. And when the harvest comes, we discover that there is always more blessing when it is shared.
That is what we hope our community garden will continue to be: a place of abundance, welcome, connection, and service. A place where the gifts of the earth are shared with our neighbours, and where the gifts of our community are shared with one another.
As we look toward the coming year, we are excited about the possibilities. We hope to build upon this beginning with opportunities for cooking classes using fresh vegetables from the garden, and we are especially excited about ways our newly formed youth group might become involved. There are surely other possibilities that we have not yet imagined.
One year in, the garden is already teaching us something important. Ministry does not always begin with a grand plan. Sometimes it begins with a conversation, a patch of earth, a few seeds, and a willingness to see what God might grow.
We are grateful to everyone who has helped make this dream a reality, and to everyone who has spent time tending, planting, harvesting, and sharing. Most of all, we are grateful for the opportunity to share the abundance of our garden with our neighbours.
The garden has only just begun to grow. We look forward with hope and joy to seeing what God will grow next.
