Man's passion helps grow church garden

Frank Peavy pondered a world without hunger over his fence line.

The passionate gardener just knew his friends at church would help the community's neediest residents if only they had the means.

In this case, that meant a garden.

"His dream was that the church would grow vegetables to give to the hungry," Peavy's Naperville fence-post buddy, Jan Dusek, recalled.

At the time, Peavy held two plots of his own at the Naperville Community Gardens. One day, he took Dusek for a drive, walked into the park district offices and dropped a bombshell.

Two plots near his were untended. She needed to ink the deal and claim them.

While Dusek enjoyed Peavy's enthusiasm, she didn't - just then at least - share his dream.

"He said 'You don't have to do anything,'" she recalled, with a chuckle. "He did everything and he had a small group of helpers."

That first year, the tiny crew working the garden for Our Saviour's Lutheran Church delivered its bounty to Hesed House, an Aurora not-for-profit corporation sheltering a food pantry, soup kitchen and PADS site.

As the produce rolled in, Dusek agreed to shift her growing focus away from flowers, if only just a little. The following year, she rented her own plot. Peavy - conveniently - found another vacant one nearby.

"Someone else signed up for an adjacent plot," she said. And things just snowballed.

"We ended up with six plots this year," said Dusek, who designed this year's planting layout.

Growing produce for neighbors in need is the premise behind the Daily Herald's annual Giving Garden campaign. It's a program that encourages gardeners to plant a little extra and deliver it to food pantries across Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties.

For the ninth year, we're setting a goal and challenging gardeners to surge right past it. This year, we want gardeners to deliver at least 65,000 pounds of fresh, nutritious vegetables and fruits to participating pantries.

Don't have a huge garden? That's OK. Every little bit delivered helps. Wait, you don't garden at all? Feel free to pick up some produce the next time you shop for groceries and drop that off at the pantries. It's still a grand improvement in terms of nutritional value from the standard boxed nonperishable or frozen foods normally distributed to pantry clients.

As their gardens have multiplied, the volunteers from Our Savior's Lutheran Church have expanded their scope.

With such a wealth of fresh food, the church decided to host a PADS homeless shelter location one night each week for two months this summer. They're also helping mentor women transitioning out of homeless situations. Then there's the refugee families their church works with.

And their pantry efforts shifted closer to home - the Loaves and Fishes Food Pantry near downtown Naperville.

With more than 100 tomato plants growing in the group's voluminous series of plots, there should be plenty of food to spread around.

One of the key components of the church's transition program for single mothers either trying to stay out of or leave homelessness is nutrition awareness. Fresh produce fits neatly into that picture.

They try to help them understand how important it is to eat a healthy diet, church member and gardener Terry Maulsby said.

As the crew soldiers on this summer, slogging water by hand to their plants, they do so despite the loss of their leader, Peavy, who died this spring of cancer at age 62.

A small sign marks their plots in his honor: "Frank Peavy Memorial Garden."

It's a fitting honor and a reminder for those working there.

"This," Maulsby said, "was his passion."