Salve Students Help Aquidneck Island's Community Gardens Flourish for Good Cause

As students prepare to leave Salve Regina University this weekend — some just for the semester, others graduating for good — they’ll leave behind a growing, thriving garden that will help feed Aquidneck Island’s homeless and the hungry year-round.

More than a dozen Salve volunteers recently pitched in at two Middletown gardens: one at the Senior Center, which is shared with the Head Start program next door on Green End Avenue, and another at Calvary United Methodist Church on Turner Road. The efforts were part of Salve’s Community Service Day on April 29, a first-time effort when more than 100 students fanned out across the island to help at libraries, community centers and more.

At the Middletown Senior Center, Salve graduating seniors Alana Cimillo and Kelsey Raduazzo were among six volunteers who helped erect a fence around the garden, then worked with children from the next door Head Start school to weed the area.

The Middletown Senior Center garden is a joint project that several times each year brings together local seniors and children from the East Bay Community Action Program (EBCAP) Head Start center. The garden yields fresh produce used in daily meals for seniors, according to Senior Center Director Arleen Kaull.

At the Calvary Community Gardens on Turner Road, three local churches work together to keep the indoor and outdoor gardens growing year-round to provide fresh produce to area soup kitchens and shelters. Calvary United Methodist Church is joined by and St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Newport in the effort. The Community Gardens also welcome volunteers from throughout Aquidneck Island to help out seven days each week, regardless of religious affiliation or denomination.

Linda Wood, Coordinator of the United Methodist Church Community Garden for the last four years, said many of the Salve students who recently completed their “service day” assisted by helping build gardening structures and by working in the gardens, tending to tomato and collard green plantings.

Many of them had been volunteering at the Community Gardens throughout the year too, she said.

“They’ve been with us for the school year and we’ve been really happy to have them here,” Wood said.

Last year, the Community Gardens raised nearly 3,000 pounds of vegetables and made about 200 vases of flowers that were distributed to area nursing homes, Wood said.   

Volunteers are essential to the success of the gardens, she said, noting that needs vary from building raised flower beds to weeding, gardening, harvesting and delivering the items to the local soup kitchens, shelters and nursing homes.     

Anyone interested in volunteering at the Calvary United Methodist Church Community Gardens in Middletown may call Calvary at 401-847-6181.