Glory Community Garden: 35 beds, face-mask melon hammocks, and a quietness that Linda Lockhart calls ‘a God thing’

The Girl Scouts had a problem. Their watermelons were enormous — bigger than anyone expected — and the vines could not support the weight. The melons kept threatening to split from the stem and fall.

So the scouts improvised. They took old COVID face masks, fashioned them into small hammocks, and suspended each melon in its own sling from the vine above.

Every watermelon made it to harvest.

Linda Lockhart, a retired teacher and principal who joined the Glory Community Garden’s steering committee three years ago after completing a Master Gardener course, shared the story Tuesday on Lead Live as an illustration of what happens when you give children a garden bed and a problem to solve.

Lockhart appeared alongside gardener Rose Bradshaw, who has tended a bed at the garden for two years and places small Jesus figurines in every bed before planting season begins — a practice she describes as practical faith.

The Glory Community Garden operates under the auspices of Barnett Chapel United Methodist Church in the Doyle District. The garden features 35 rental beds — 34 currently rented, with one available — and five educational gardens, including a decomposer garden, a fairy garden, a salsa garden, an herb garden, and a native salvia and sage garden.

The mission is accessible: grow food from the ground up, in a neighborhood setting, with families and children who may never have put a seed in the ground before. The educational beds give structure to that mission. Field trips from Tom Daniels Elementary have connected the garden to the school community in the Doyle District, where the garden serves as a tangible expression of the neighborhood’s self-reliance.

Lockhart described what the garden feels like when she is there alone in the early morning.

“When I’m there by myself, it’s a quietness. It’s a calmness,” she said. “I think it’s a God thing.”

In September, Lockhart is hosting a specialized children’s workshop titled “Bugs in the Garden” — a program designed to teach local youth that insects are not enemies to be eliminated but essential partners in a healthy garden ecosystem.

The steering committee is looking for private funding to send representatives to the American Community Gardening Association’s annual convention.

“To me, the Glory Community Garden brings in partnerships from all over the neighborhood and the community to be able to do something for themselves and for their community,” Bradshaw said. “Growing something from the ground up.”

Bugs in the Garden workshop: September. Bed rental inquiries: contact Barnett Chapel United Methodist Church.