Casting the ‘green zone’ vision behind Seventh Street Plaza

STEUBENVILLE -- When Urban Mission Ministries purchased the Seventh Street plaza at North and Seventh streets in downtown Steubenville, it came with an estimated 2 1/2-acre "green space" behind it -- the potential for urban gardening.

That vision as a community backyard food garden project will be cast during a meeting Thursday beginning at 7 p.m. at the plaza. It is open to anybody interested in urban gardening and supporting the work of it, according to the Rev. Ashley Steele, the mission's executive director.

Steele defined urban gardening as " just your backyard, using what you have to produce good things, and I think the reality is that we are in a space that typically you don't garden in, you wouldn't see that many, but we want to make sure that people know that you still can do that in even a downtown area."

It has been the mission's intent to develop the space into an urban farming area that would grow healthy food for the mission's pantry but also teach others how to grow food in space they have or as container gardening, according to Steele.

"We knew that we didn't have enough people, resources and expertise to actually just do that on our own, so we knew we needed other people to come alongside and help us," she said, noting Thursday's meeting will include the involvement of Toronto-area farmers Shawn and Beth Dougherty, whom she said have an interest to do sustainable agriculture.

"They've agreed to help us, to bring people that they know and resources, and we've also had support from the OSU Extension Office, the master gardeners have expressed interest in helping and we've also had Rev. Bruce (Hitchcock, Ohio Valley District United Methodist Church superintendent) and some of the friends from United Methodist churches, help us in very practical ways lately," Steele said. Also helping in the vision is Justice Slappy of the Unity Garden on Dock Street. Another group interested in helping is the Harmonium Project.

"We were realizing we need to get everybody together, to dream and to plan and to even do some preparing of what we could do this summer and build on for the summers after that," Steele said.

"The vision would be this would become almost like what they call a model garden area where we would serve as a kind of a teaching space for people to learn how they can garden in their own backyard," she said.

And that's important.

"We've realized that people want to be able to provide for their families for themselves, even though a lot of people come to us to receive food and certainly people go to grocery stores to purchase food, and that there's also something empowering when you can grow your own food. Typically when you're growing your own food, it's good food, it's nutritious foods, fruits, vegetables, things like that, and we know that's an important piece to people's well being, too," Steele commented.

"If you can do that in your own backyard using the resources that you have, not only can you feed your family but you can do it in a healthy way. There's something special about being able to get your hands in the soil and something can be created from that," she added.

Steele explained that with the help of the Dougherty couple, the area has been mapped out into what it could look like, including a model garden area, which would be where the community could come in to learn best practices in urban gardening.

"This would also be where we would be growing food to put back into our pantry or depending on how much we grow, we want to get it out to as many people as possible," she said. "There also will be small plots that would be available for local members of the community, neighbors if they don't necessarily have land themselves they can come and grow it here."

An opportunity for school-aged children "to see the development of how you start a garden, grow a garden and harvest a garden" is a facet of it, too.

There would be areas for composting, according to Steele, and small sections designated for accessible items for people -- everything from hay and soil to wood chips and bedding sawdust.

The space also would be home to greenhouses that were donated from DiGregory's Greenhouse, according to Steele.

"I think the meeting that we'll have will be geared primarily to cast vision, because that's important for people to see, but also for people to lend their thoughts as to what they also feel might be needed. And then if people have resources, like literally resources like these types of things that they can help us make connections to get this to get this done because, ultimately, this isn't going to cost a lot of money," Steele said.

"It just will take what we have and be able to use it, whether it's repurposing it or just bringing in resources from different places. A lot of people have had extra hay, a lot of people have wood chips as people are cutting down trees, so a lot of this just kind of takes coordination, and we think it could come together pretty quickly for this year, at least in terms of just starting some of our compost and maybe getting some things set up, and then after the first year, it will continue to grow each year after that."

Questions can be directed to Steele at (740) 282-8010.