This past Sunday a group of RE children began the planting of our new Pride in Diversity garden. With the help of Kate Jerome, landscape committee chair, and RE parent volunteers, Anna Martin and Sandra Goodson, the children planted a variety of bulbs that will provide color next spring. The landscape committee conceived the idea of a Pride garden for UU Asheville and is being supported by our LGBTQ+ group, Universal Rainbow Unity (URU). The Pride garden is designed to celebrate the support for diversity within UU Asheville and our community at-large with a variety of native flowering perennials with the flower colors representing the LGBTQ+ flag. Our new garden is prominently located by our main sidewalk and when completed will provide a rainbow of color throughout the seasons. In addition to the flowering plants, the garden will also be identified with a sign calling attention to Pride in Diversity.
The landscape committee has been very active this past summer and fall identifying and labeling our gardens, weeding, planting, and cleaning out the beds. We have been blessed to have a dedicated core group of volunteers taking ownership in the maintenance and appearance of our grounds and because of these volunteers we are able to landscape some of the grounds that have remained empty with new plantings, including the new Pride Garden. If you have not noticed the grounds lately, take a walk around our main campus and observe the Pollinator garden in the courtyard and the grasses planted under the wall facing Edwin Place. We also have a wonderful blueberry patch by the playground and a sensory garden in the playground. If you are a gardener or just like to dig in the dirt with other folks, consider joining the landscape committee in the spring when we will start digging again. The committee welcomes all levels of gardening abilities.
Venny Zachritz, Connections Coordinator