Georgetown community garden offers juvenile community service opportunities

Tory Thompson works with juveniles performing community service at the First United Methodist Church Community Garden in Georgetown. The garden produces fresh food for the Caring Place, a non-profit that helps needy families. Two teenage boys leaned over hoes on a hot morning digging up weeds. One of them pulled up a huge clump and showed it off to Davin Hoyt, a volunteer at the garden. The teenagers were doing community service because they were either on probation or at risk, said Linda Bloomquist, a Williamson County probation supervisor.

The community service program for juveniles began last summer at the garden, which provides food for the Caring Place. Georgetown teens can also perform their community service by stocking shelves at a store where Habitat for Humanity sells donated home supplies, weeding and removing rocks at local parks, and distributing fresh food at the Caring Place. But the garden at First United Methodist Church was such a popular choice that 10 teenagers performed 306 hours of community service there in the summer of 2012, Bloomquist said.

The volunteers at the garden, including Hoyt, made the teenagers “feel so important and so good about themselves,” Bloomquist said. Hoyt said he always tries to find out the teens’ interests so he can get them more involved with the work. One of the teenage boys this week said he liked gumbo, so Hoyt showed him vegetables in the garden that could be used to make it. “They always pay attention if you talk about food,” said Hoyt.

The plants growing in the garden include bell peppers, squash, okra, cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelon and black-eyed peas. The other teenager was more interested in sports, so Hoyt talked to him about how gardening can be a fitness activity. Hoyt, a graduate of Texas Tech who has started a community garden website for Georgetown called GeorgePatch.com, also talked to the teenagers about the way the garden’s irrigation system works.

The juveniles are always accompanied by a probation officer who also works with them in the garden, said Bloomquist. Five probation officers put in 107 hours of community service at the garden last summer, she said. “When the kids see us working along side of them, getting dirty, they realize everyone can participate,” said Bloomquist. The goal is to make gardening a family activity, she said. “If we can get one kid in gardening then maybe we can get a parent to come.”

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