After receiving grant-dollars from the Reimagining Church Project from the Yale Divinity School our congregation broke ground on our Pollinator Project in the Fall of 2025.
In order to reimagine stewardship of God’s creation, we proposed through this stewardship of our property to invite the community and environment into a new garden ecosystem. We plan to do this by creating a pollinator habitat to support local insect and wildlife species, expand our community vegetable garden which helps feed local food insecure people, and create seating and pathways for our neighbors.
We anticipate our on-going Pollinator Project to enhance our ministry in the following ways. To begin, even in its planning stages, our congregation has become more connected to area scientists and environmentalists as we have consulted with them, sharing how we are inspired by Christ’s incarnational presence to love all our neighbors, not just the human ones.
Red Aronia beginning to bloom in May 2026
This theme of Creation Care is deeply important to many of our community members and we hope this project will only continue to create more ideas for ways to engage in this ministry. We also expect that other people in our broader community will engage with us because of these values being made so visible. The project, along with our vegetable garden expansion, will multiply our members’ connections to each other as well. Maintaining the garden and the plantings through their stages of establishment will require teamwork and collaboration as we “get our hands dirty” side by side.
Sweetshrub, May 2026
We hope that the visibility of this “oasis” of natural habitat and the paths leading up to our vegetable garden will show our community that there are no barriers to entry into our ministry. We plan to present these new spaces as sites of collaboration with schools and other institutions to teach about our environment and native species, to offer them as community meeting areas, as well as establish practices that utilize them as worship sites and places of both celebration and meditation.
A row of shrubs with Spring growth, May 2026
Up close with a Serviceberry shrub, May 2026
The exterior of the church with layers of cardboard and wood ships, called “sheet mulching” to eliminate invasive species while enriching the soil before flowering perennials are planted in mid-May 2026.