Wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat and a cheery smile, Julene Jarnot looks every bit the gardener.
“Gardens are gathering places,” she said, watching honeybees flit from flower to flower at the community Creation Care Garden at St. James Church in Falls Church. “They’re places of encounter. You can encounter God, you can encounter others, encounter the Earth.”
Jarnot had enjoyed creating and tending the St. Isidore Garden last year at her parish, Our Lady Queen of Peace Church in Arlington. But she wanted to hear more from other Catholic gardeners in the area.
Then, the seed of an idea took root. This year, Jarnot founded a virtual community for Catholic gardeners, the Catholic Garden Network.
The network’s directory currently lists 31 community gardens across the country, from the Franciscan Monastery Garden Guild in Washington to the Jubilee Garden of the St. Mary Catholic Community in Helena, Mont. Five CGN gardens are located in the Arlington diocese: Isidore’s Garden at Our Lady Queen of Peace Church, St. Fiacre Vegetable Gardens at Nativity Catholic Church in Burke, Creation Care Garden at St. James, and Plot Against Hunger/Food for Thought Garden at Marymount University in Arlington.
All varieties of garden plots may become a part of the network, from vegetable gardens to flower gardens and even rosary gardens. The network lists contact information in its directory for member gardens and features a community forum in which any gardener may participate, member or not.
Susan Agolini, associate professor of biology at Marymount, tends the Food for Thought Garden, which produces lettuce, tomatoes, onions, kale, parsley, beans and potatoes. “The reason we even started this was I wanted to get students engaged in community service projects,” Agolini said.
The university’s Food for Thought Club distributes the produce through a food packaging program at Rock Spring Congregational UCC in Arlington, which bundles various types of produce and gives the bundles to families in need. The Food for Thought Garden also donates the produce to students suffering from food insecurity on campus.
Another diocesan CGN garden, St. Fiacre at Nativity, also donates its produce to families in need through a parish ministry, No Hands but Yours. Parishioner Kim Young, who helps maintain the 10 garden beds, said students from Nativity Catholic School even dig in. This year, the students practiced an indigenous cultural farming method where they planted the “three sisters” — corn, beans and squash — next to each other.
Young said the CGN will help new gardeners find inspiration and useful information: “It’s a great project, and it allows people who are looking for more information on how to get started.”
Find out more
To learn more about the Catholic Garden Network, go to catholicgarden.org.
