Greening the Landscape in Kansas City
"My name is Mary Gerken, and I am the grounds coordinator for Abiding Peace Lutheran Church in Kansas City, Missouri. About five years ago I became actively involved in the grounds ministry of our congregation. The church property includes 4.4 acres of very flat ground. There were virtually no trees on the property, and just a whole lot of grass to mow.
The landscape plan called for standard suburban junipers and clipped hedges. I wondered if there were alternatives to this plan. I contacted a nursery which specialized in plants more native to our area, which also would provide wildlife food and shelter. Things started happening from there. Over several years we have planted numerous trees and shrubs, put a grape arbor and meditation garden in our back yard, used strawberry plants as a back lawn, put up bird houses and water areas, laid out a nature trail, put in a butterfly garden, and set aside ground for a community garden.
For the last several years we have collected Christmas trees (we even go out driving and pick them up from homes), which we then chip and add to our nature trail. Our community garden has been used as a therapy exercise for one of the local mental health facilities, which has had a plot for the last two years.
We have obtained chips for the nature trail from our local power and light company and recently have been contacted by a tree service, asking if they could give us chips as well. We also maintain a compost bin and brush pile, which the neighbors use since they can't easily get rid of lawn waste anymore.
Another of our projects has been our berry patch, where we grow heritage raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries and mulberries; this has provided a whole lot of shelter for rabbits and birds. We also had a killdeer raise two batches of fledglings this last year for the first time.
Response from our neighbors has been good (except for those who said they understood we were turning our grounds into a wildlife sanctuary and they didn't think that was appropriate).
This sounds like a tremendous amount of work, but it has all been done with a very small number of people (maybe a dozen). So a congregation doesn't have to be large to do this. Help can be obtained from girl and boy scout troops if no youth group is available."