The veggies have been picked, the last of the flowers have bloomed and the garden beds are now bare and dormant, waiting for a new growing season at The Giving Gardens of McDonough County.
For the fourth year, The Giving Gardens (GG) team of staff and volunteers created numerous free public access gardens that are available and open to anyone, and provide access to harvest fresh vegetables, herbs, and flowers. During the 2025 season, GG had nine public access gardens in the county, including seven in Macomb, one in Bushnell and one in Colchester.
'We had a great year in 2025,' Founder and Executive Director John Curtis said. 'We more than doubled our overall garden footprint and provided access to our public access gardens to more people in more neighborhoods.'
In years past, the gardens were managed by Curtis and a small group of Ameri-Corps members; however, in 2025, The Giving Gardens launched their garden steward program. As part of the program, volunteers became much more involved, actually doing most of the maintenance in the majority of the gardens.
'Our mission is to have public access gardens in every neighborhood and within walking distance of every home,' Rural Development Fellow and GG Volunteer Coordinator Whitney Fowler explained.
'Clearly, we are going to need even more well-trained and committed volunteers in the future if we are going to meet that goal.'
In 2025, over 30 GG volunteers worked more than 1,600 hours which more than quadrupled the number of GG volunteer hours in 2024, Curtis added. Volunteers were also critical to the success of the GG production gardens, which are located just outside of Macomb and are used to supply the WIRC Food Pantry and the GG share space located at First Presbyterian Church with high quality, nutritious fresh vegetables, greens and herbs. 'Access to quality, fresh produce is something that we identified as a need in the community. In addition to all of the produce available in our production gardens, our volunteers helped us to grow, harvest and share a huge quantity of vegetables and bagged greens and herbs,' noted GG Program Coordinator Nikki Spencer.
'For example, we harvested and shared 731gallon bags of greens, 422 bags of green beans, 5,416 tomatoes and 10,494 peppers to share with the community. And that does not even include what was produced for the community to harvest in the nine production gardens.”
In 2026, the Giving Gardens intends to keep growing vigorously, Curtis stressed. They have planned expansions at five of the existing gardens and intend to add five new public access gardens in 2026.
'Our public access gardens do a lot more than produce quality food. They are havens in the community where people meet their neighbors, learn about nature and plants, insects and birds and gather fresh ingredients for their table,' he shared. 'Our gardens may be the main connection people have to the outdoors and to nature.
For many people, our gardens make their world feel more abundant and more hopeful, and make people feel welcome and connected.' 'People want these gardens in their communities and their neighborhoods. They're reaching out to us from as far as Quincy, Galesburg and Peoria, as well as places like Prairie City, Good Hope and Rushville,' he added. 'In Macomb, we've spoken with the leadership team from The Elms and have possible new locations identified for gardens at Edison School and, possibly, the Middle School and High School. We are going to do everything in our power to meet that need in 2026.'
The Giving Gardens receives the majority of funding local residents.
Donations can be sent via check (payable to The Giving Gardens) to: The Giving Gardens, 400 E. Carroll St., 61455. Donations can also be made at Givinggardensforall. com.
'We'll launch our year-end campaign on Giving Tuesday (Dec. 2). Everything we do is made possible by our volunteers and our incredibly generous funders,' Curtis concluded. 'We ask everyone who supports what we do, and wants to see more gardens, to help us fund our growth for the year ahead.'
Visit The Giving Gardens Facebook page at facebook. com/GivingGardens-ForAll for updates. More information about GG can be found on the website at givinggardensforall.com, and anyone interested in receiving the GG e-newsletter or mailed newsletter can be added to the contact list by emailing to admin@ givinggardensforall.com.
