THE VISION

The Sweet Soil Community Garden will serve many wonderful purposes for many people.  A place of peace and comfort.  A fun space for children to romp and play, to roam through meandering paths.  A place to feel and sense the wonder and healing presence of God.  This Garden will be a place of laughter, sweat, prayer, love, sharing, connection, good food, straw hats, shovels, exercise, artistic expression, water hose play, community and everything else that’s good and pleasing to our Heavenly Father.

The Garden will appeal to the five major human senses:  vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch.  Imagine taking in all the colors of the rainbow as you walk by the border flower gardens, the greenery of the herb garden, and the colorful all-important pollinator garden.   A child, learning to be still to hear the butterfly’s flutter and the buzzing of the bees.  You’ll taste a warm, ripe tomato straight off the vine and never buy a store-bought tomato again.  Wisteria vines hanging over the wood pergola (with “Thy Kingdom Come” engraved across the entrance) provide the sweetest scent, along with the lavender mini-garden and the smell of fresh herbs from the herb garden.  Ornamental grasses and a wide selection of flowers and vegetables such a kohlrabi and lemon cucumbers give us opportunities to experience many different, distinct textures in the Garden. 

A fruit tree orchard with dwarf trees will give us fresh, organic fruit in the future.  They will also provide shade and we will sit on benches and blankets under these trees.  We will plant these trees for future generations.

The chickens in the chicken coop will give us colorful black, purple and brown eggs to share with our Food Bank and sell to support our Garden.

The Garden will have brick pavers under the pergola that individuals will purchase to honor their loved ones.  We also will erect a wall structure with wall brick pavers.  On one side of the wall, we will create an espalier.  Brick paver sales will be an on-going fundraising event for our Garden. 

 We will care for our bees to do our part in guaranteeing their survival.  In turn, they will provide us with honey and wax to sell to support our Garden.  Animal slaughter is a no-no in this sacred place.

The Food Bank garden will consists of vegetables and fruits from different countries to reflect the international flavor of our Church membership as well as the surrounding community we serve.  Everything we grow will be organic.

The Children’s Garden will have child size tables, chairs, water tables and other structures for children to learn math, science and life skills through gardening.  There will be a “tin man” and a ivy covered tee pee structure in the Garden.  The children will have opportunities to create signs, paint stones for the paths and do other creative projects to make their Garden their own. 

Individuals who rent their individual plots will grow what they’d like and will get technical assistance from experienced gardeners.

We will have raised beds for the elderly and the handicapped.  All paths will be handicap accessible.

There will be baskets hanging along the fence for gardeners to share their excess harvest with others.

We will create intergenerational activities to allow Life Explorers (55+) to work with our children, for youth to work with our children, for the young adults to work with Life Explorers. 

We will provide experienced Spanish-speaking gardeners to assist our Spanish-speaking community in the Garden.

In the future, we will have an adequate amphitheater for outdoor performances and an outdoor kitchen for cooking classes with an adobe stove.

We will probably be the first garden in the State of Colorado to create a key-hole garden structure.  Key-hole gardening began in Africa and is a creative way to make compost quickly, create a large harvest and save water.