Union Gospel Mission Gardens

Union Gospel Mission is a shelter for 400 homeless people. At any one time there could be 20 to 60 children on campus.

When you enter the main building to access the garden areas you pass the Deborah Hall Memorial Chapel and walk down a hallway lined with paintings by Denver Moore. Both Deborah and Denver are well known from the book Same Kind of Different As Me, which portrays the journey that brought them together at the mission. A movie based on the book premiered in 2017 about Denver and Deborah and UGM. This movie and book has raised funds for Union Gospel Mission and many homeless shelters across the USA.

Gay Larson has been the project lead since 1997 the same year she became a Master Gardener. Gay, along with Master Gardener volunteers, took an empty seven acre area and turned it into a luscious and verdant garden with numerous beds, seating areas, and a playground for the children. At the Vineyards Apartment located east of UGM, Master Gardeners maintain a vegetable garden, which provides fresh produce for UGM's kitchen.

Under Gay's tutelage Master Gardeners designed and planted 14 flower beds, created a vegetable garden, painted a play house, decorates for holidays, painted doors, railings and window boxes, built a deck, pruned trees and shrubs, built copper trellises, espaliered crabapple trees, built a dry creek bed, installed an irrigation system, taught classes to the residents, worked with Boy Scout groups, designed and printed coloring books for the children, and produced a gardening journal to raise funds for gardens. The Master Gardeners have help made Union Gospel Mission a safe, desirable, and attractive place for it's residents.

Workdays are Monday mornings. 8 a.m. in summer, 9 a.m. in spring and fall, 10 a.m. in winter. Each week Gay prepares a 30 minute horticulture lesson for the master gardeners pertaining to the seasons. On Sundays, Gay emails a detailed list of chores and a schedule for gardening days. Over the past twenty years approximately 155 master gardeners have helped in some capacity and 8 to 15 faithful Master Gardeners come each Monday to beautify the campus.