John Miller

Co-Founder

In 2021, the Freemason Baptist Church sought out members of the Downtown Norfolk Civic League to start an emerging project on the church’s plot. John, seeing an opportunity to give back to the Downtown Norfolk community, left the board of the Norfolk Civic League to take on the daunting tasks that came with developing and launching a community garden.

Prior to his work with the Freemason Baptist Church, John already had six years of gardening experience. John started learning how to garden while he was still on active duty in the Navy. While gardening, he got a chance to interact with the broader gardening community at the Knitting Mill Creek Community Garden behind Fellini's restaurant in North Collie Avenue. According to John, “the interactions that I had with a broader gardening community really showed me the power of gardens to bring diverse people together, and kind of have a common purpose.” After learning the tools of the trade, he sought out more ways he could give back to the community.

One of the reasons why John embarked on the project was to bring back a sense of community, togetherness, and neighborliness. Due to the pandemic, many communities suffered due to the lack of being able to get together, and now many people suffer with finding a sense of community even after the pandemic has ended. When asked about how the pandemic has affected community development in Norfolk, John Miller said that “You have people that are still uncertain coming out of the pandemic, whether they're interested in doing group activities and what kind of group activities are they comfortable in.”

Because of this, awareness was one of the many challenges John Miller and his team faced when working on launching their community garden. Community gardens commonly struggle when considering who to reach out to and how to do it. Social media became a big part to the development of the garden’s community and they had even made an advertising campaign to bring in members. Another challenge John faced was financing. Because of the engagement they saw with social media, the community garden benefitted immensely due to the contributions of donors, local businesses, and members of both the church and the garden.

Being a mixed-community garden, the garden welcomes people from all walks of life. Around 25% of members apart of the garden have no experience with gardening, but John says that gardening is for anyone willing to try. Gardening has not only provided food for those in need, but a safe, no-judgement zone for anyone to grow their own food. After 2 years of launching the project, John says that there are future projects in the works that will focus on more ways to give back to the Downtown Norfolk community.