Little Flower's Little Gardens Club
The neighborhood's garden club meets on the second Tuesday of each month at various homes across the neighborhood. Meetings are fun, social and informative affairs, often featuring light refreshments and a guest speaker. Past topics have included edibe landscaping, composting, canning, turf management and pollinators.
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Check out the club's Facebook group for friendly garden talk and to stay
up-to-date on club events!
The Row House Project
OUR MISSION
The Row House Project creates connections between home gardeners and their neighbors in need of fresh food.
The Row House Project is an initiative of the Little Flower’s Little Gardens club, based in the Little Flower
neighborhood on Indianapolis’ Near Eastside. Like every community, the Near Eastside faces issues of poverty and
hunger. As a way of addressing hunger among neighbors, the Row House Project was born. Its goal is to provide
hobby gardeners with the opportunity to donate produce to those in need.
We’ve partnered with Westminster Neighborhood Services, which operates a food pantry on New York Street and is
able to accept and distribute the donated produce in the community.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
At the beginning of the season, participating gardeners are asked to commit to providing a portion of their yield – as
small as the produce from one plant to as much as they can give – to RHP. The project will provide each gardener
with two packets of organic/non-GMO seed or two starts to contribute to their garden.
As vegetables and fruits become available to harvest, collection and donation will begin. One designated group member
will serve as the donation lead for a two-week span, and will take the produce to Westminster Neighborhood Services food pantry.
To help recipients of the produce prepare it, gardeners will be asked to contribute simple, 5-ingredient-or-fewer recipes that feature the produce they are donating (for example, a salsa recipe for tomatoes). Recipes should be simple, healthy and easy to prepare.
Email The Row House Project for more information.
About Westminster Neighborhood Services
For over 30 years, Westminster Neighborhood Services (WNS) has been serving the children and families of the Westminster/Holy Cross and Willard Park neighborhoods. Today, Westminster is located in a growing area where families struggle with poverty, stress, illiteracy, joblessness and substance abuse. Located on Indianapolis’ Near Eastside, this economically distressed community has one of the highest rates of poverty in the city. Within the neighborhood, 43% of families live in poverty and at any given time. The families we serve struggle to overcome a variety of obstacles in working toward sustainability.
The programs that Westminster offers vary from the following: Pre-school, K-8 Afterschool, K-8 Summer, Food Pantry, Soup Kitchen, Clothing Closet, Adult Education (including GED/HSE classes, ESL classes, Cooking classes and more), Gennesaret Free Health Clinic, and multiple helpful connections such as Health Insurance, Legal Help, AA, etc.
On average the Food Pantry serves 100-125 households per week, the Soup Kitchen serves 150-160 people per week, and the Gennesaret Free Clinic serves 20-25 people per week.
