Giving Gardens

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Macomb, IL
Giving Gardens

Community access gardens and garden education.

06/05/2026

Yesterday, our team of AmeriCorps members and volunteers installed drip irrigation, hand watered, and set up plant supports at the big production garden on the corner of West Adams and North Johnson in Macomb . The drip irrigation is a little time consuming to set up, but is essential as we head into hotter weather. It’s also the most efficient in water usage.

06/04/2026

Yesterday, we planted the first public access garden in Morton. With Tracey’s team of local volunteers from Community UCC, we worked in more than 10 cubic yards of compost into a very poor, clay soil and raked out and removed many loads of Bermuda grass. Then, we transplanted a full garden’s worth of seedlings, watered them in, and covered them to protect the young seedlings from rabbits. We’re excited to be bringing our gardens to more people in more neighborhoods!

06/03/2026

Before leaving for Morton to plant their garden this morning. More photos to come!

06/01/2026

Raspberry season has begun! Check out our public access gardens at Project Insight, Lincoln and First Pres.

05/26/2026

We harvested green beans, snap peas, heads of romaine lettuce, spinach, chard, kale, and cilantro at the production gardens this morning. Thanks to our awesome volunteers for helping us harvest fresh, real, quality, local foods to share with the community.

05/24/2026

The Giving Gardens installed a big, new public access garden at Edison School on Friday! Superintendent Twomey stopped by to cheer us on as we were building fence. We’re excited to serve yet another neighborhood in Macomb.

05/21/2026

We have a bunch of tomatoes and peppers to give away at The Giving Gardens Share Space at 400 E Carroll. Shout out to the Macomb and West Prairie FFAs for donating surplus plants.

05/20/2026

Yesterday, we started cage building (in this photo, Tyler and Jim are making “pepper” cages). At the Giving Gardens, we use concrete reinforcement wire to create supports for many of our crops including tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. We also use supports for many of our flowers.

One of the secrets to making our gardens highly productive, neat, and visually appealing is that we provide physical supports to our larger plants.

Note that working with concrete reinforcement wire is tricky and dangerous, especially the sharp ends of the newly cut wire (NOT a kid friendly activity!) Our staff and volunteers wear protective clothing and gloves when we’re doing this work.

05/16/2026

Whitney and Tyler made a special trip to Morton CUCC this week to help them broadfork their entire public access garden. We have a challenging heavy clay soil there that is going to need a lot of love and work. Before rototilling, we needed to “lift” the soil to dry it out and to make the soil easier to “work”. Then we will need to add a lot of compost.

05/15/2026

Yesterday, we were at Roseville to rototill their new public access garden a final time, put up deer fence and transplant and water in sweet peppers, jalapeños, tomatoes, green beans, okra, kale, collards, zinnias, cilantro, dill, parsley, celery, and basil. Thanks to Cherilyn, Pastor Mark, and (especially)Tony for helping us get set up with water. Looking forward to meeting up there with volunteers in a couple of weeks to do some training and set up drip irrigation.

Address

400 E. Carroll Street
Macomb, IL
61455

Website

https://givinggardensforall.com/

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