by Katie Patrick
At Catholic Social Services of Southern Nebraska we dream big – and one of those dreams is to maintain a community garden at our downtown Lincoln office.
When I worked at the Asian Community and Cultural Center prior to coming to CSS, I was responsible for our senior program, which included organizing a weekly community outing for all of our refugee clients 55 and over. We went to the Henry-Doorly Zoo in Omaha, explored the grounds of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and visited a couple of museums, but what I loved most was when we went to Sunken Gardens and when we toured the future site of the Karen community’s garden near Bryan West. 
The Karen people are originally from Myanmar (formerly Burma) but due to ethnic conflict have been living in neighboring Thailand for decades. For them, maintaining a garden of fresh vegetables was a way of survival, control, and tranquility.
Imagine being forced to leave your home, and country, and you end up living in a tent along a row of hundreds of other tents. Imagine living in a place where you stand in line for water, rice, salt, a bar of soap, and occasionally a protein like beans or meat. Imagine sending your children to school with a hundred or so other children learning under the shade of a palm tree. Imagine being told that you can not leave the refugee camp no matter what – not for work, not for medical care, not for anything.
But, you and a handful of your neighbors are given a small plot of land and seeds for planting. Soon, that plot of land becomes how you feed your family. It becomes a small part of your life that you are able to control. You decide when to plant, sow, and harvest. It becomes a place of peace and solitude amid chaos and despair.
Does it surprise you to know that many of the refugee clients we work with are farmers, just like many of you or your family members or neighbors? The Karen people excel at farming. After decades of living in refugee camps and certainly in their home country of Burma, the Karen are expert farmers. All they need is a plot of land where they can renew their spirit and get to planting.
To help make this happen were two groups in Lincoln, including 10 employees from Clark and Enersen and several members of the Lincoln chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. And so it was on a cold Saturday morning in November, we gathered with roughly $10,000 worth of lumber and worked tirelessly building 15 cedar garden beds and a shed. And, boy, does it look amazing! The volunteers that morning did an incredible job making our dream come true.
The community garden is located just west of St. Louise Gift & Thrift. We will be running a campaign this spring for garden supplies, mulch, seed, and much more. And, we will also be looking for volunteers with a green thumb, so if this is you – keep us in mind, or reach out now by completing a volunteer application online at our website, csshope.org.
While building a community garden along ‘O’ Street isn’t as far-fetched as a baseball field in the middle of Iowa, it will, hopefully, invite everyone passing by to stop and appreciate the serenity of urban gardening.
(To learn more about the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the oldest Irish Catholic fraternity in the U.S., visit their website at www.aohlincoln.com)
