Guardian Angels Food Shelf Garden

Photo: Tate Carlson

Woodbury residents Barb Prokop and Maggie Lindberg, who started the Guardian Angels food shelf garden, at harvest time.

The ¾ acre plot on the north side of Guardian Angels Catholic Church is a gardener’s paradise, with five kinds of squash, watermelon, cucumbers, onion, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, beans, carrots, radishes, beets, lettuce, spinach, eggplant, herbs, eight different varieties of tomatoes and an assortment of peppers. These gardeners, dubbed the “gardening angels,” are busy completing the harvest of over five tons of produce with a purpose: meeting the needs of those struggling to put food on the table.

The Guardian Angels food shelf garden, operated by volunteers from the Oakdale parish and the surrounding community, makes weekday deliveries of produce to the Christian Cupboard Emergency Food Shelf in Woodbury, Friends in Need Food Shelf in St. Paul Park, the North St. Paul Food Shelf and Casa Guadalupana House of Hospitality. “This is much bigger than I’d ever envisioned, and it’s been done with a lot of help from many people,” says Maggie Lindberg, who started the garden with fellow parishioner Barb Prokop in 1995.

Walking through the garden with Lindberg and Prokop, it’s obvious that they know every inch of this plot. There’s the sweet potatoes (“a fairly new crop for us,” says Lindberg), the row cover placed over selected vegetables as an insect barrier, spinach ready to be pulled, a gopher hole in the onions that popped up overnight. “I see a job for tomorrow,” says Prokop with a smile, while proudly pointing to the fence added three years ago to keep out pesky deer and geese.

“The inspiration to care for others—feed others—comes from the Gospel,” says Prokop. “Maggie and I approached our pastor at the time, Father Mike Arms, about planting a garden on church land with the food shelf in mind, and Jake Jordan from Jordan’s Ranch helped us design it. That was 17 years ago, and the need is still growing. We’ve been increasing our harvest; this is not a problem that’s going away.”

The gardening angels, who’ve averaged over 300 in number each of the last five years, plant, weed, rotill, water, harvest and prepare the produce for delivery, plus make deliveries and maintain machinery/the irrigation system. Preschoolers in the church’s Little Angels Preschool program also have a hand in the garden. Each fall, the four-year-old class harvests potatoes, and then plants a new crop of potatoes the following spring.

“I like the idea that somebody benefits from the garden,” says Jim Jacobs, who has volunteered for six years with three of his children as well as grandchildren ranging in age from 5 to 17. “And this is how I get my gardening fix, working with a master gardener and learning about new crops. I’ve done gardening in the past, and now I’m in a townhouse.”

The idea of a community food shelf garden has grown to another local church. Volunteers from Woodbury Lutheran Church are completing their second season at their garden located on the church’s Afton property off Bailey Road.

“Barb (Prokop) gave us a lot of support as we got started, and last year we raised just over 2,300 pounds of food for the Christian Cupboard food shelf,” says Mark Stutelberg, business administrator. “It’s really been a fun project and we are often amazed at how generous people are in helping us. We have farmers who bring us water tanks because we don’t have running water at the site, nurseries who give us plants and seeds, and people who start plants at their home for the garden.”

Prokop hopes to take the food shelf garden a step further by working closer with the people who benefit. “Perhaps it’s education on what to do with the produce, maybe cooking with them to develop a closer, personal relationship,” she says. “We’d like to bring an element of hope to those in need.”

Volunteer

Volunteers are welcome each season, late April to mid-October, at the Guardian Angels food shelf garden (Barb Prokop, 651.458.1629) and the Woodbury Lutheran Church Garden (Mark Stutelberg, 651.739.5144.

Share this Article

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•