BY LAVINA MELWANI

A GARDEN OF SPIRIT, AND OF FOOD 
The First Presbyterian Church of Newtown and other groups turn an acre of ground into a place of sustenance for
homeless shelters and food banks

It could have been a poster for a perfect world, with Asians, Hispanics, blacks and whites working together on the grounds of the First Presbyterian Church of Newtown in Elmhurst. On one recent Saturday, as they laughed and chatted, young and old hauled soil and prepared the vegetable beds. They had been drawn together by the Greens for Queens Urban Farm Project, which provides fresh food for food banks and homeless shelters. The project is a collaboration between the church; Green Guerillas, a Manhattan-based nonprofit organization; and South Asian Youth Action, a nonprofit that provides after- school activities for low- income teens in Queens, operating out of the church basement.

Spiritual sustenance

First Presbyterian, which is the oldest church in Queens, dating back to 1652, has given spiritual sustenance to an ever-changing population as immigrants remake the borough. And now, by giving away the abundant fruit and vegetables that are going to sprout from its soil this summer, the church will be extending help to needy local residents.
"The economy was really hurting, and hunger was rising astronomically," recalled the Rev. Stanley J. Jenkins, pastor of the church, which is located at 54-05 Seabury St. "We read in the paper that, just in Queens alone, the demand in the food banks increased 90 percent in 2003. So we figured this was something that we can do together, and it's something concrete."
For technical know-how, the gardeners turned to Green Guerillas, a group that has been instrumental in transforming more than 700 vacant lots into community gardens in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island.
Hannah Riseley-White, its community organizer, said this was Green Guerillas' first major effort in Queens in recent years.
The garden will be "all organic, entirely natural, with no chemicals, pesticides or fertilizers," she said. "The vegetable beds will be ready within a week for the planting, but this is the heaviest job - building the beds and moving the soil. In a month or less, you will be able to see fruit."
The 10 beds on the acre of land will be planted with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, beans, cucumbers, melons, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, asparagus, spinach and various other greens. A second sowing in mid-July will include broccoli, cabbage and carrots.

Food banks can depend on it

Since they plan to use the same garden plot, Jenkins explained, "it's planned to be a sustainable food source so that, from year to year, the food banks can depend on us for a certain amount of food."
The parishioners, many of whom are immigrants from African countries, also will work on the vegetable beds. In fact, one bed has been reserved to grow the hard-to-get herbs indigenous to their native homelands, according to the pastor.
South Asian Youth Action, which has more than 200 young people attending its after-school programs, is designing a summer program centering on the garden.
Urban young people never get a chance to feel the earth, said Annetta Seecharran, the organization's director, adding that "their experience is mainly with the concrete."
She said that a group of 15 to 20 low-income South Asian youths will be able to participate in the summer project, learn skills, build their self-esteem - "and take home fresh, organic fruit and vegetables."
Suhail Ahmed, 14, of Elmhurst; Faiz Hasan, 18, of Woodside; and Salman Quader, 15, of Jackson Heights, are members of South Asian Youth Action who left their basketball practice to help start the vegetable beds. Their minds were on the big game the following week, but, as they ferried soil in buckets, Ahmed said: "I think it's good we're doing it. It's going to make it much nicer here."

A garden party

A harvest party is being planned for later this year, and Jenkins envisions lawn chairs and a meditation garden for the neighborhood.
In a post-9/11 world, the pastor said, people are anxious and need to be comforted.
"Part of the spiritual question we all have is what can we do because there's so much out of our control," he said. "And one of the things that we can do is, we can feed people, we can pull our community together, take care of each other."
 

Lavina Melwani is a freelance writer.

For more information Contact First Presbyterian Church of Newtown at 718-639-3126 or at www.fpcn.org.
South Asian Youth Action is at 718-651-3484 or www.saya.org.
Contact Green Guerillas at 212-594-2155 or at www.greenguerillas.org.

Copyright ©2004, Newsday, Inc.

This article originally appeared at:
http://www.nynewsday.com/search/ny-dailynabe3840054jun08,0,3633127.story

Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com