Sun City Horticulture Club Cultivates Community Focus
Bill Greenhalgh says he has three jobs in retirement; maintaining good nutrition, exercising, and giving to others. As director of the Sun City’s Horticulture Club’s outreach program, he can do all three at once. Over the past 15 years, thanks to the generosity and oversight of the club’s board of directors and 20 or so member-volunteers who plant and harvest organic vegetables nearly year round, the club has donated close to 30,000 pounds of vegetables to those in need, from south Georgetown to Andice.
The club recently planted red potatoes and tomatoes and are planning to add sweet potatoes, cucumbers, and other vegetables later this season. In the fall, they plant root vegetables: carrots, beets, cabbage and broccoli. “The only thing we don’t plant,” Bill laughs, “is brussels sprouts; no one eats them.”
Club members have an overwhelming desire to share the fruits of their labor with the community. Bill says, “It all started with the president asking if anyone had any extra produce. He delivered it to The Caring Place, Helping Hands, and Annunciation Maternity Home for their use. That grew into our current program that includes five beds dedicated, in perpetuity, to charity.”
The outreach program has ten additional beds that are sometimes used for vegetable donations when residents who rent them are unable to tend them due to illness or travel. “We don’t want them to languish,” Bill says. “We take over the unused beds, amend the soil, and always leave it better than we found it. That’s the payback for the donation to the club.”
Aside from the mission of benevolence, he says he enjoys the sense of joy that permeates the work and the people. “I couldn’t do it without Leslie Hart, who takes care of scheduling and logistics for us. And I love working with folks like St. Vincent dePaul in Andice; they come pick up the food and then bring back the boxes. We all enjoy it, laugh a lot, and it’s not really work; it’s a ministry.”
Click here for more information about the club or email Leslie at [email protected].
photos by Anne Maher