Blog: Growing More Than Vegetables: How Two Jefferson County Departments Cultivated Community

Sometimes the best ideas take root slowly.

What began as two separate visions within Jefferson County has blossomed into a collaborative garden that is growing far more than tomatoes and peppers. Today, the shared garden behind the Jefferson County Health Department and Human Services campus serves as a place where youth learn valuable life skills, families connect over healthy food, employees build relationships, and residents discover how healthy soil supports healthy communities.

Where It All Began
The story started in two places.

For the Jefferson County Health Department, the idea of creating a community garden had been discussed as far back as 2019. Staff wanted a way to continue promoting healthy eating and wellness after funding for the Fit Families program ended. While enthusiasm existed, the project remained on the drawing board for several years.

Meanwhile, Human Services was already putting gardening into practice.

In 2023, the Human Services Wraparound team piloted a small garden plot in Jefferson's community garden. The project quickly proved to be much more than growing vegetables. Youth participating in the program learned life skills, explored healthy eating, spent more time outdoors, and discovered meaningful alternatives to screen time. The experience was so successful that many participants asked to do it again.

By 2025, the Human Services Prevention Services Unit established its own garden on county property, allowing youth and their families to participate more regularly. Children helped plant, care for, and harvest the garden, proudly taking fresh produce home to share with their families.

A Shared Vision Takes Root
Although the two departments approached gardening from different perspectives, they shared many of the same goals: promoting healthy eating, supporting wellness, encouraging community engagement, and creating meaningful experiences.

Rather than developing separate projects, the departments combined their ideas, resources, and expertise to create one collaborative garden. Human Services youth even helped plant three of the Health Department's raised garden beds, sharing extra tomato, pepper, and flower plants from their own project. Staff from both departments continue to share equipment, watering responsibilities, and maintenance throughout the growing season.

Today, the garden features six raised beds filled with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs, green beans, spinach, onions, jalapeños, and other fresh produce. This year's theme focuses on growing ingredients residents can use to make fresh homemade salsa.

More Than a Garden
The garden serves different purposes for each department, but everyone involved supports the same mission of improving health and well-being.

For Human Services, the garden provides youth with opportunities to develop leadership skills, learn responsibility, build confidence, and experience the rewards of growing their own food. Many participating families face food insecurity, making the fresh produce both educational and practical. Through gardening and cooking activities, youth learn healthy eating habits and valuable life skills they can carry into adulthood.

One memorable example involved a youth who proudly harvested vegetables from the garden, took them home, and made homemade salsa with his grandmother. Another child tried a cucumber for the very first time after picking it from the garden -- and discovered he liked it.

For the Health Department, the garden has become an extension of public-health programming. It provides a peaceful setting for the Perinatal Mental Health Group, offers opportunities to discuss nutrition and healthy lifestyles, and creates a welcoming space where employees, families, and community members can gather. Handprints on the raised beds and painted rocks created by participants serve as lasting reminders that this garden belongs to the community.

Supporting Employee Wellness
Although much of the produce is intended for participating families and community programs, employees also benefit from the garden.

Working outdoors provides valuable time to step away from daily responsibilities, reduce stress, collaborate with co-workers from different departments, and reconnect with the healthy habits they encourage in the community. Staff have embraced the opportunity to plant, weed, water, harvest, and simply enjoy spending time together in the garden.

Connecting Gardening and Public Health Through soilSHOP
The garden also serves as the perfect setting to educate residents about something many gardeners overlook: healthy soil.

This connection comes through Jefferson County's soilSHOP program.

soilSHOP -- short for Soil Screening, Health, Outreach, and Partnership -- offers residents free soil screening for lead while providing practical education about safe gardening practices. The program helps homeowners understand how past land use, older homes, deteriorating paint, and other environmental factors can affect soil quality.

If elevated lead levels are identified, residents learn simple ways to reduce exposure, such as gardening in raised beds with clean soil, washing produce thoroughly, removing shoes before entering the home, and practicing safe gardening techniques.

By connecting soilSHOP with the garden, Jefferson County demonstrates that growing healthy food begins with healthy soil. Together, the programs reinforce an important public-health message: Healthy environments support healthy people and stronger communities.

Looking Ahead
Both departments hope the garden continues to grow in the years ahead.

Human Services would like to expand the space to involve more youth and families, offer additional cooking activities, and grow even more fresh produce. The Health Department hopes to build on the garden's success through new partnerships, educational programming, wellness initiatives, and community involvement. Both envision the garden as a place where employees, clients, families, volunteers, and residents can learn, connect, and thrive together.

What began with a few shared ideas has grown into something much larger than a garden. It has become a living example of what can happen when Jefferson County departments work together to improve the health and well-being of the people they serve -- one seed, one family, and one season at a time.

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