The Lindenwood Park Neighborhood Association (LPNA) Community Garden is located at 6517-19 Smiley; behind St. Michael Temple Church, one block from Epiphany of Our Lord Parish, near the corner of Leola and Smiley. Our first growing season was spring 2012 with 11 raised beds. We continued to add raised beds each year as neighborhood interest increased. As of 2021, we have reached our maximum of 29 raised beds and 7 flowerbeds.
We are a Gateway Greening sponsored community garden (gatewaygreening.org). Gateway Greening is an organization dedicated to educating and empowering people to strengthen their communities through gardening and urban agriculture. They believe that community agriculture projects improve the appearance of neighborhoods and inspire, educate, and reflect the pride of their participants. They provided us with supplies to establish our first 11 raised beds, a staff liaison to help guide us through the process of getting started and surviving our first year, a picnic table, bench, and compost system. As members of the Gateway Greening, our members may purchase seed packets and seedlings at ridiculously low prices and attend free classes at the Gateway Greening Bell Garden.
Our members pay a small annual fee for the use of each raised bed through the growing season from March through November. They grow fruits, vegetables and flowers in raised beds approximately four feet by ten feet. Members plant, maintain and harvest the produce grown in their raised bed. We also encourage our members to share their produce with our generous neighbor who allows us to use her outside water faucet to water our plants.
We have a three-bin compost system. Appropriate community garden waste and food scraps from member homes are included to create the organic material that we add to our soil to help our plants grow. We also bring in free compost offered by the City of St. Louis Forestry Division.
Members donate one week of the season to garden maintenance. The community garden maintenance includes weeding and watering the flowerbeds or mowing and edging around our raised beds and our community garden area. We provide a detailed guideline of responsibilities at the beginning of the membership season. We also encourage our members to help keep the church property clean because it is through St. Michael’s generosity, we use this land free of charge.
If you are interested in becoming a member of our community garden or for more information, please send a request to the email address below.
communitygarden@lindenwoodpark.org
We maintain a list of contact information and we will contact you when a bed becomes available. Please come by and visit to watch our gardens grow.