By Susan Gallagher

Judy Cooney’s home in Missoula has just a small yard and trees shade what little garden space there is, so she grows vegetables and berries in the community gardens at Blessed Trinity Parish.

Tomatoes, lettuce, carrots and peas are doing well, Cooney is curious about the kohlrabi and bok choy new to her lineup and if the upcoming potato harvest is like last year’s, her children will revel in unearthing spuds as though they are buried treasure.

“I don’t hear too much grumbling about going to the garden,” said Cooney, the mother of 8-year-old twin girls and two boys, 5 and 2.

The Cooney family has one of about 30 plots in the Garden of Eaton, a collaborative outreach by Blessed Trinity, Missoula’s Joseph Residence transitional housing and Garden City Harvest, a nonprofit that advances community agriculture. Together they encourage people to plant and reap on the church’s Eaton Street land, 1.3 acres previously weedy and unused. The cost is $40 for the summer, there are arrangements for people unable to pay and the church’s well water is free. In addition to the 30 or so plots each 15 by 15 feet, there is a much larger community plot for big space consumers such as pumpkins and sunflowers. This is the second year for the Garden of Eaton, named by Blessed Trinity parishioner Hans Zuuring, a key figure in the project’s launch. A $2,400 municipal grant obtained with the help of an AmeriCorps volunteer paid for expenses such as tools that are shared, and for materials Zuuring used for construction projects, among them a shed and picnic tables. “One of the cool things about a community garden is that it becomes a great place for people to have lunch,” said Genevieve Jessop Marsh, community outreach director for Garden City Harvest, which aims to help Missoula become a city where anyone can afford to eat well. Some of the gardens’ bounty goes to the Missoula Food Bank.

Particularly for first-timers, success in gardening is boosted by automatic sprinkler systems, and the Garden of Eaton has one. Blessed Trinity parishioner Charlie Warner, who is in the sprinkler business, donated the materials and labor.

Cooney, also a parishioner, said she signed up for a plot last year after she read a notice in church. Her house is only a half-mile away, and often she goes to the garden with her children on bicycles or the youngest in a stroller.

“The kids all enjoy playing in the dirt,” said Cooney, whose husband is not a gardener. “It’s six hours a week that they’re outside doing something constructive. They’re not watching TV.”

Holy Trinity’s Sister Mary Jo Quinn said the garden has become a link between the parish and the neighborhood, providing a place where parishioners and gardeners from the Joseph Residence interact. The land is close enough to the residence that its occupants, people previously homeless, have easy access to the plots that some choose to obtain.

Sister Mary Jo also said the garden is something of a social hub on summer weekends, with parishioners strolling among the plots after Mass to see what’s up, literally.

“The big thing to me is the community-building, even more than being green and growing your own food,” said Zuuring, a Maryknoll missioner who retired from the University of Montana faculty and does his gardening at home.

Cooney said she is “grateful to the group of people who came together to make the gardens possible. They put in a lot of time to make it happen. I have it easy—I go to my plot, and the water’s there.” Zuuring sees good times ahead for the Garden of Eaton.

“People are into it,” he said.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 8, August 20, 2010.