News & Announcements

The Creation Care Team has worked for the past six seasons transforming existing gardens and creating new spaces to develop gardens and meadows with native plants and shrubs. A lot of the early, heavy-duty effort was done with a combination of volunteer work and the work of landscaper contractors. The contractors were funded with grants obtained from the Chesapeake Bay Trust and the Exelon Green Grant programs totaling over $30K.

Most of the work over the past three seasons has been accomplished by a small enthusiastic group committed
to the vision of creating special spaces around our church grounds. The result of these labors is the many gardens that we now enjoy as a congregation and share with the community around us. The grounds are a significant and successful outreach mission of the church.

We have beautiful gardens and grounds! Now we have a new challenge: maintaining the gardens, meadows, and woodland sacred spaces. For this we are calling on the congregation to join us. We are asking you to take personal responsibility for caring for a garden space as part of your stewardship commitment to our church. Members of the Creation Care Team will work with you to define the scope of maintenance needed at present, but the space will be yours to nurture and develop. For those areas that are not adopted for care, it will likely be necessary to hire the services of landscape professionals.

Available Opportunities Minimal Time

• The corner gardens at the pavilion Native plants and grasses needing minor weeding and seasonal replanting, as needed.
• The church sign garden and the garden at the Beechwood corner. Native plants and grasses needing weeding and implanting, as needed.
• The strip of grasses by the main parking lot sidewalk and the corner garden. Native grasses needing trimming and native plants and shrubs needing weeding.
• The two small gardens by the Beechwood church steps. Shrubs and grasses needing weeding, the grasses need trimming, the Serviceberry trees need minor, appropriate trimming and care.
• The entrance gardens at the Church House. In need of creative esthetic annual planters/watering and control of the ground covers; Bonus gardens, beside the Church House and Garage, needs minor weeding, size control of perennial natives.
• Garden at the Summit Road entrance. Shade tolerant perennial native plants needing nurturing as they spread, minor weeding. Note, part of this garden was originally planted in 1898!

Moderate Time Requirement

• The labyrinth gardens and shrubs. Several varieties of sun/shade native plants and grasses needing weeding and seasonal size control, watering of the shrubs in dry times, control of weeds in the meditation space.
• Calvin Rain Garden. Native plants and shrubs in need of minor weeding, size control and trimming, and seasonal cleanup.

One of the selected areas of the Woodland Sanctuary gardens:

• Maintain area around the five benches.
• Maintain the grass and flowers around the Big Stump play area.
• Maintain the Hillcrest ES meadow garden. Native plants needing size control during the season and seasonal cleanup.

There will be opportunity to sign up at church for a garden space on Sundays or you may contact Ron Gunderson at cinron.md@gmail.com for more details.

Thank you!