THE AGAPE GARDEN

GROWING FOOD, GROWING JUSTICE

As a part of a multi-pronged effort to address student poverty, we have transformed our backyard space into an area that will create community, teach valuable skills, and spark important conversations about faith, life, and justice. We have done this by creating the Agape Garden. In this garden, we will partner with students, the campus community our congregational partners in ministry to meet the immediate needs of our students while working together for a just community where no one is hungry.

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AGAPE

WHY WOULD A CAMPUS MINISTRY TRANSFORM THEIR BACKYARD INTO A GARDEN?

Transform

The Agape Garden exists because our students need food.
Planting a garden involves the community and the students in growing healthy, organic food that will meet the immediate hunger needs in our midst.

The Agape Garden exists because gardening together creates community and breaks down walls.
Gardening together literally provides common ground. We work the soil, tend the plants and harvest the fruits of our labors together. The Agape Garden is a place where students, faculty, staff, and community members will work side-by-side.

The Agape Garden exists because we are committed to addressing questions of why there is hunger.
Mercy and justice walk hand in hand. The Garden is a place where we engage issues of food justice through conversation, prayer, and action.

5 GREAT WAYS

TO BE A PART OF THE AGAPE GARDEN!

5 Ways

1. Help us fill our beds!

To grow good food we need good soil. You can help by sponsoring our soil. Organic soil for our beds costs $3/cubic foot. We need 324 cubic feet of soil to fill all of our beds. How many feet of soil will you sponsor?

3. Sign up for a garden bed

We are taking names of interested students, faculty and staff of SDSU who would like to tend one of the community garden beds.

5. Help us get work done.

Join us for an upcoming work day at the garden.

Contact for more info.

2. Share your wisdom

Are you a gardener who can share their wisdom with the students? Lead a gardening or cooking workshop for us!

4. Help us stock our garden!

Here is a list of some items we need:
Irrigation timers, garden gloves, pruning tools, sun hats, kneeling pads. We welcome gently used or new items!

Avacado Resilience

"Avocado Resilience: What is this tree teaching you?"

[Jesus] told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still, I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” - Luke 13.6-9

About six years ago, we planted this avocado tree at Agape House--the first hopeful step into our new communal garden. It struggled through salt burn from horse manure. It gave us a couple of small avocados once but just languished. Then a vandal sadly snapped its trunk in half. We were sure it would die...and it was dead to all appearances. Slowly a shoot came from the dry stump, but I sure assumed it would never produce fruit again.

Nevertheless, we faithfully watered and composted around this avocado tree in trust and hope. Then another major impact hit--shade for most of the year from the new dorm next door and parking structure built right by the tree. Again, I assumed it would surely never produce fruit in shade almost all year--this photo is still just coming out of the shade at 10:40 am! However, I was wrong yet again--you can see new avocados growing (a dozen!). What is this tree teaching you?

“Ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand are the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being." Job 12.7-10