Toiling in the garden for body and soul

Steve Wilcox of Roselle serves in a variety of ministries at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, but only one provides food for the body and soul: the church's Giving Garden.

This summer, Wilcox assumed a leadership role in cultivating the 3,000-square-foot vegetable garden, located south of the church on its South Barrington campus, near its Fast Trac parking lot.

Little did he know what he was getting into. According to Cheryl Besenjak of Hoffman Estates, who had led it in prior years, it takes an all-out effort just to keep up with the crops.

She points to one summer when the garden produced 2,000 pounds of produce, including the fruit from 50 tomato plants.

"What that meant was due diligence on the part of weekly volunteers," Besenjak says. "It's a big undertaking, a huge task."

That's why on any given Saturday, Wilcox can be found leading those volunteers, in doing everything from weeding and cultivating, to building fences and planter boxes. They run the gamut from professionals, like doctors and nurses, to entire families who work together.

This year, they planted tomatoes, potatoes, squash, onions, lettuce, cabbage and a wide variety of peppers, all nurtured with the intent to give them away in the church's busy Care Center and Food Pantry, located in Hoffman Estates.

When the plants start producing, Wilcox expects to collect at least 100 head of cabbage, and several rows of lettuce.

That's the fun part, he concedes. Keeping up with the weeds in such a large garden, and watering it, have proved to be challenging.

Yet much can be accomplished when his volunteers come together each week, bearing out the age-old adage, that "many hands make light work."

"It's amazing what we can do in two hours," Wilcox says.

Wilcox himself comes from a background suited to his new ministry. He briefly studied horticulture in college, but his roots in the garden go back even further than that.

He shares that his maternal grandfather was a gardener in France, while his paternal grandfather was connected to Luther Burbank, often considered to be the father of American horticulture.

Yet despite his rich history, Wilcox found new responsibilities to be a long way from backyard gardening.

"It's much bigger, and with that comes a lot more challenges," Wilcox says. "We've been plagued with a variety of problems this summer, with the wet spring, so it may not be as pretty as I'd like it, but it's still producing."

Sharing fresh produce with the less fortunate drives Wilcox and his volunteers. Good thing, because Willow Creek's food pantry reports one of the largest increases across the suburbs, with 84 percent more guest visits than last year, bringing them up to 3,000 visits per month.

"We're really busy," says director Josie Guth simply.

Of those coming to their door, roughly 30 percent are new, she says, with the rest having to come more often because of changes in their economic situation.

Wilcox hopes to lessen their load by meeting their spiritual and physical needs. He dreams of one day being able to invite clients out to the garden, where they can meet and even work with other volunteers.

"My vision is to have food pantry clients pick their own vegetables," he says, "and invite them to the service to meet their spiritual need after meeting their physical one."