Community Garden Takes Root

Board members breaking ground were: L -R, Courtney King, Levi Yardley, Sister Barbara Smith, Kelly Thompson, Sister Helen Mueting, Diane Liebsch, Sister Mary Elizabeth Schweiger, and Sister Elaine Fischer.

For several years the sisters have dreamed about the possibility of hosting a community garden on their property for the people of Atchison. In spring 2024, that dream became a reality when the director of Catholic Charities in Atchison, Kelly Thompson, contacted Sister Elaine Fischer about a community garden on the Mount campus. A core group composed of Kelly, Diane Liebsch, Courtney King, and Levi Yardley met with Sisters Elaine Fischer and Helen Mueting to explore this possibility. Sister Barbara Smith joined this group later, and they became the Merrywood Garden Board of Directors.

Around 25 sisters and Atchison residents gathered on April 7 for groundbreaking and a blessing of the space on the north end of the Mount campus. Courtney, an architect, designed the first phase of the garden, which included four potato towers, ten raised beds, and four elevated raised beds that are accessible to people who use wheelchairs. The beds were built at a workday on April 13, and on May 12, volunteers that included 10 students from Benedictine College filled the beds with rock and soil, planted potatoes in the towers, and weeded an overgrown garden plot that was already present on the site.

“Merrywood Garden,” as it was named, is now producing an abundance of vegetables and herbs, including tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes, beets, cucumbers, squash, green beans, arugula, cilantro, peppermint, spearmint, basil, and oregano. Volunteers take turns watering the garden as needed. It was decided that all the vegetables and herbs grown in the first year will be donated to the food pantry at Catholic Charities in Atchison. Beds that individuals and families can adopt for their own use may be added in coming years. The creation of a community garden was one of the goals of the plan the sisters developed through the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. This Platform, an initiative of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, is inspired by Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. The Platform is a shared resource that equips families, parishes, religious communities, and other sectors to develop concrete actions to achieve real and lasting solutions to the ecological crisis.

The Laudato Si’ Action Platform encourages goal setting in seven areas: Response to the Cries of the Earth, Response to Cries of the Poor, Adoption of Sustainable Lifestyles, Community Resilience and Empowerment, Ecological Spirituality, Ecological Education, and Ecological Economics. Mount sisters have developed goals in each of these areas. The community garden touches on many of these areas.

Merrywood Garden also promotes the Benedictine value of reverence, as reflected in St. Benedict’s statement that