YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – It started with a divine message in 2009, and 16 years later a wish to educate children keeps the Southside Community Garden thriving.
“I grew up on the lower South Side, and I really feel that Youngstown has a lot to offer for everybody,” said garden founder Lois Martin-Uscianowski.
The garden along Williamson Avenue started when Martin-Uscianowski got a message from God, she said.
“It said to put a garden on your grandmother’s land,” she said.
Martin-Uscianowski lived with her grandmother as a child, but the family sold the house in 1979, and it and several others nearby burned down a few years later.
Initially she ignored the voice, reasoning that she lives in Springfield Township and she’s allergic to many plants. But she drove by and saw the property overgrown.
“I was totally devastated,” Martin-Uscianowski said.
She acquired the first four lots in 2010, adding more the next few years, growing the garden to 11 lots.
Her late sister provided the inspiration for it to become a butterfly garden. Her sister’s favorite butterfly was a sulfur butterfly, and after her death, Martin-Uscianowski saw them everywhere.
An area covered in netting provides plants that host and feed various types of butterflies. Monarchs, for example, feed on milkweed. Friday morning, a swallowtail – black with blue and gray spots, fluttered around the enclosure, trying to find an exit.
From 1 to 4 p.m. July 19, the garden will host its 13th butterfly festival. Attendance varies, with about 500 visiting one year. Music, activities for children, refreshments and education about butterflies will keep visitors busy.
Martin-Uscianowski is hoping to secure sponsors to help cover costs.
Attendees who visit each area of the garden may receive a butterfly kit to take home.
A wild meadow, or pollinator garden, abloom with wildflowers, marks a new and still-developing feature of the garden. It was planted by FirstEnergy and includes native plants that provide food and habitat for native pollinators such as bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
She hopes to add a pavilion when funding allows.
A master gardener, Martin-Uscianowski learned about butterflies at the Beech Creek Botanical Garden & Nature Preserve near Alliance, where she volunteers weekly.
She earned certification for the garden as a monarch waystation habitat, demonstrating the garden met criteria including shelter, milkweed plants, nectar plants and management.
Martin-Uscianowski tends the Southside Community Garden with help from Linda Robinson, who also grew up in the neighborhood, and Deb Congenello. Children from a nearby day care center also visit and help at the gardens periodically.
There’s also picnic tables, fruit trees, supply sheds and a Fruits of the Spirit area at the site. Nine stone benches – each bearing a virtue that, according to the Bible, believers in Jesus Christ should develop – stand clustered near the fruit trees.
Martin-Uscianowski continues to work at the garden as a way to educate.
“My two mottos are ‘God’s land and God’s plan,’ and the other one is, ‘Show a child of any age about nature and open a whole new world for them,’” she said.
Pictured at top: Lois Martin-Uscianowski.