People who do not have a gardening space at their home are invited to claim a raised bed garden at Grace Covenant Church in Exton, where a community garden has been established.

In the spring of 2021, a group of garden-oriented people from the church formed the Exton Community Impact (ECI) group, which adopted a goal of building a community garden and offering raised beds, free of charge, to any resident who wanted one.

The idea came from congregation member Bill Palmer, who is garden co-coordinator with Tom Johnson. Palmer's parents lived in a retirement community, where they enjoyed gardening. "I saw how much they enjoyed it, and I realized we had a similar space behind our church," said Palmer. "There was a Sunday school course about 'Love Your Neighbor,' (and we thought), 'How can we show love to our neighbors?' We have people moving in that don't have land, and the two ideas merged and we built a community garden and then offered them a garden plot or two."

In addition to Palmer and Johnson, the core group of gardeners, including Rich and Deb Whiting, Dan and Lee Shearer, Candy Stambaugh and Mary Hershey, and more than 40 other volunteers, including workers from the Downingtown Chick-fil-A, built the garden, clearing out 6,000 square feet behind the church. They then installed an 8-foot-high deer fence with donated fencing, installed a 2-foot-high rabbit and groundhog fence and made a cinder block compost from blocks provided by Fizzano Brothers.

To ensure a steady supply of water for the crops, the church bought two totes to hold rainwater harvested by a custom-tailored gutter system. "We put gutters on a shed that an Eagle Scout built for us, and we harvest all the rainwater. We have two water totes holding about 300 gallons of water each, and we get that easily from one rain," Palmer said.

The 44 raised beds were filled with a mix of topsoil and mushroom soil from Mother Earth Organic Mushrooms in West Grove. Volunteers covered the soil with cardboard donated by Raymour & Flanigan and wood chips donated by Bartlett Tree Experts for weed suppression. "Penn State has a program where they analyze soil, and we took a sample and sent it in the mail. Then, they send you back the results with suggestions on how to amend the soil," Palmer said.

Only 13 beds were claimed last year, so ECI planted vegetables in the remaining gardens and grew 400 pounds of produce, including zucchini, peppers and tomatoes, all of which was donated to the Lord's Pantry in Downingtown.

This spring, ECI has announced that 29 raised beds are available for local gardeners. "They get to keep the produce," noted Palmer. "It's more of a relationship-building kind of thing. We want to meet people, have conversations with people, get to know (them) and share the love of Christ."

The ECI community garden is located in the Oaklands Business Park in Exton at 444 Creamery Way behind Grace Covenant Church. Raised beds can be reserved by emailing bill.palmer1277@gmail.com any time before May.