The Samaritan House Master Gardener Project, located at 929 Hemphill Street, started January 1, 2012. Neale Mansfield, a local landscaper, and Greg Joel, the current manager of Opal Lee’s Farm began the project as a garden for residents of Samaritan House. It was later taken over as a Master Gardener project under the direction of Carolyn Crites. Parking for the garden is located on Jennings Street one block east of the Hemphill entrance. We have work days every Tuesday, beginning work anywhere between 8:30 and 10 AM and usually working for 2 to 3 hours. Times are announced in an email blast on Monday afternoon.
The garden has two main missions:
Our shade garden provides a quiet, peaceful, shady area with lots of seating for residents to enjoy a respite from the stresses of the day. The shade garden was completely re-landscaped in 2021 by gardeners from the Master Gardener intern class. There is a monarch way station, three live oak trees and many drought-tolerant perennial plants.
The other mission is to provide fresh and healthy vegetables and fruits to the Samaritan House cafeteria for the residents and for various local food pantries. We often donate produce on Friday morning at the 4Saints Food Pantry, currently located on the Texas Wesleyan University campus a few miles down Rosedale Street from the garden. Anything harvested during our Tuesday workdays goes into the cafeteria. The chef is very pleased to be able to provide locally grown organic produce to the residents, all of whom are immunocompromised.
The edible gardens have plenty of room for experimentation. We sometimes do straw-bale gardening and there is a very active companion planting project. Since biodiversity is important to soil and plant health we include a wide range of plants in the raised beds of the garden. An old brass bed serves as a framework for an herb garden. Many of our vegetables are started from seed by the gardeners to be transplanted when appropriate. Even sweet potato slips are not outsourced.
Flowers have not been forgotten. Many annual and perennial plantings of flowers provide pollen and nectar for the pollinators. Poppies, borage, dill and cilantro are encouraged to re-seed themselves every year.
Volunteering at The Samaritan House Garden provides the opportunity to learn vegetable and fruit gardening from the ground up. Pun intended! We take it to the next level by using unusual vegetable varieties and combining them with companion plants to counter pests and encourage beneficial insects.
Perennial food crops are of particular interest to our gardeners so we have a raspberry patch, a grape vine and an asparagus forest.
| Project Lead: | Mary Brown (Edible Garden), Donna Smith (Shade Garden) |
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| Contact Info: | In Membership Directory |
| Workdays: | Tuesdays |
| Time: | 9:00 am |
| Location: | 929 Hemphill St, Fort Worth, TX 76104 |
| TCMGA Activity Code: | Demonstration Gardens |