Sacred Grounds Inspiring Hope with Native Plant Gardens on Congregation Grounds and Members Homes by Naomi Edelson Sacred Grounds is a program of the National Wildlife Federation. It is a program where congregations can put their faith into action by combining their passion for caring for creation and build a stronger community. Sacred Grounds is focused on caring for creation through gardening with native plants. Planting native plants helps people and wildlife. They provide food for birds, butterflies, and native bees which in turn pollinate our own food. Additionally, they slow the flow of polluted stormwater, keeping our waterways clean and safe, especially important in an era of climate change. Sacred Ground congregations often both create a native plant pollinator garden on their grounds and engage/educate their members about planting native plants at home. Sacred Grounds was founded in 2012 in the greater Washington D.C. area. Since then, hundreds of congregations in the country have joined Sacred Grounds. Many have all found it to be a fun, engaging community event that brings the congregations joy from youth to elders. So many people already like gardening and it is a way to incorporate caring for creation values. It also is a great opportunity to work in multi-faith cohorts including churches, mosques and synagogues to share information and lessons learned and to create a bigger impact in our watersheds. For example, National Wildlife Federation worked with the Jones Memorial United Methodist Church in Washington D.C. Their pastor, Reverend Cary James has a background as an environmental engineering and was already organizing river clean ups for trash along the Anacostia River when he learned about Sacred Grounds from another nearby church pastor, Reverend Kip Banks, Sr. of East Washington Heights Baptist Church. The Anacostia borders these majority Black communities and has been identified as one of the most polluted rivers in the country until recently. Both congregations converted portions of their lawns with a native plant garden, hosted inspirational presentations on why plant native plants which then led to the churches hosting a native plant starter kit giveaway of several native plants like Black-eyed Susan to have their congregations’ members bring home to plant. Since this happened during the pandemic, this ended up being a way for the community to see each other in person since it was outside and with Reverend Jones as a new pastor to this church, to his delight he got to meet some of his members for the first time.
23 E. J. TODAY
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