Parish Garden Ministries
Join us in growing and sharing our harvest with our neighbors at St. Simon of Cyrene Food Pantry and Beyond Hunger. You are invited to help us harvest or donate produce from your garden every Tuesday evening. Please note we’ll start harvesting at 5:00 pm. Daylight is fading. If you’d like to volunteer in our community garden or donate produce from your own garden, volunteers from the Ascension and St. Edmund Community Garden Ministries will be in the Ascension Parish Center Parking Lot (808 S. East Ave) every Tuesday evening this summer/fall to accept donations for St. Simon of Cyrene and Beyond Hunger.
Third Day Garden at St. Edmund Campus
The garden at St. Edmund was named Third Day in reference to the third day of creation, “And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good”. Parishioners began the garden as a way to provide fresh produce to the local food pantry. We have been able to donate as many as 700 servings of fresh vegetables to Beyond Hunger in a year. The gardeners also sponsor monthly activities from May - September for children and adults on both campuses about gardening topics.
The Third Day Garden is located in a niche at the back of St. Edmund. Besides growing vegetables, it also includes a native garden area providing for pollinators and serving as a monarch counting station.
The Third Day Garden was not in use during the 2023 summer because of the storm damage to St. Edmund. it will be in full operation during the 2024 season. Gardeners meet in Murphy Hall on the third Thursday of every month.
For information please contact Nora Abboreno [email protected] or Michele Wheeler [email protected]
Susan Fleming Garden at the Ascension Campus
Ascension Community Gardeners gather to plan in January, repair raised beds in March, plant seeds in April and May and harvest on Tuesdays all summer and early autumn. Produce is given to the St. Simon of Cyrene Food Pantry. We also help to support Beyond Hunger. This is a fun activity for families.
If you would like to donate your garden surplus to a good cause, volunteers from the Ascension and St. Edmund gardeners will be in the Parish Center Parking Lot and Community Garden Tuesday evenings this summer and fall accepting donations for St. Martin’s Food Pantry. The Parish Center is located at 808 S. East Avenue in Oak Park.
For more information, please call John Owens at 708 846-1827 or [email protected]. For information on our native garden contact Carolyn Cullen at
Harvest and Donation Totals
SPREADSHEET WITH HARVEST AND DONATION TOTALS FOR 2023
Follow along as we track the total number of fresh produce harvested and donated each week. Each year we collect fresh produce from the gardens of parishioners and friends of Ascension and St. Edmund, which we combine with our harvested produce to donate to St. Simon of Cyrene Food Pantry and Beyond Hunger. Want to help? We'd love to have you join us! Contact John Owens at the email or phone number above.
Check out this spreadsheet to see how much produce has been donated this year.
Ascension's Native Garden is a certified monarch waystation!
Gina Orlando, head of Ascension's HOME Team (Honoring Our Mother Earth), along with Carolyn Cullen and her daughter Mary, show off the new Monarch Waystation certification sign in the parish center native garden. Its milkweed plants provide food for Monarch caterpillars and its other native plants have welcomed Hummingbirds and Goldfinches.