The Rice Street Gardens in Maple Grove are now quiet and dormant, with hundreds of growing spaces covered in snow.
“This is a very special place,” declares Pastor Dana Nelson of Galilee Lutheran Church. “This is a safe place. It’s a place to spend from May to October. It opens in May and closes in October.”
Nelson and the church staff (their house of worship is across the street in Roseville) are thinking about when this place will be green again and cared for by hundreds of people.
“It’s beautiful with 266 small farms on the land,” exclaims Nelson. “All religions. At least ten languages are spoken in the garden.”
The pastor explains that since 2016, the St. Paul Area Water Authority, which owns the land, has allowed parishioners, mostly from immigrant communities, to cultivate the 2.5-acre garden for free.
The only requirement is to clear the site at the end of the growing season and remove fencing and plant waste.
“I call it the Garden of the United Nations,” smiles Abraham Watson. “We go from Europe, Asia, anywhere.”
Watson, 76, says he fled the civil war in Liberia in 1990.
He says he was one of the first to garden a lot, helping clean up trash and other debris.
“It’s littered with broken bottles, glasses and scrap metal,” says Watson. “After you demolish the building, you expect junk to be everywhere and these things to be buried in the ground.”
Since then, 260 families have farmed the property, growing peppers, collard greens, cucumbers, tomatoes and other produce, according to the church.
You can secure food for over 1,000 people.
“The way they express their love now is by going to the garden,” says Esther Brown.
Brown tells us how he immigrated to the United States after escaping the civil war in Bhutan 13 years ago.
She and her parents say they lived in a refugee camp in Nepal for several years.
Brown declares that all the work her family does in the garden nourishes their minds and bodies.
“It improves my physical health, it improves my emotional and mental health,” she says.
But church leaders say the land with the garden is for sale.
They say they fear commercial development will engulf places that have grown for immigrant communities.
That is why the Galilee Lutherans have launched a crowdfunding effort to purchase that 2.5 acre land.
“What if we could go in and buy the land?” Nelson asks. “Then it will be there forever for these hundreds of families to continue growing food.”
A spokesperson for St. Paul Regional Water Services said that allowing the church to use the land was a “mutually beneficial relationship.”
He said the agency is not actively promoting the property and that it is “no longer needed for our business.”
Those in charge of these plans say it’s more than just land.
Many farmers in the exiled country believe that connecting with the earth and growing things is part of life.
A kind of hope for a new future.
“The majority of gardeners are refugees,” says Nelson. “If they lost their land to refugees 20 years ago, it is very important that they have land they can use.”
Still, the church faces major financial challenges ahead.
The congregation will raise about $300,000, with a goal of up to $1 million, Nelson said.
Galilean Lutheran representatives are scheduled to make their case before the Water Commission in mid-February.
After that, we will have a few meetings about the plan and the appraisal of the property.
Church members say they hope these measures will pave the way for them to purchase the land they have been working on for seven years.
“Let me continue gardening with this land,” cries Watson. “I will do anything to see that garden continue to thrive. I pray to God.”
Learn more about the Lutheran Church of Galilee’s crowdfunding efforts here.
