Chin Community Garden in Columbus

There are many community gardens in the city of Columbus, Ohio. Columbus has more community gardens than any other cities in the entire United States. The Chin Community Garden in Gantz Rd is one of them. The garden belongs to Emmanuel Chin Baptist Church (ECBC) which is the largest Chin Christian community in Columbus. ECBC church members a lot of energy to create this garden through the help of the Franklin Park and Conservatory.

The Chin people in Columbus came from Myanmar as refugees. There are about 500 Chins in the area. Some Chins came to Columbus earlier than 1996 but they were very small in numbers. A large number of Chins came to Columbus only in 2009.  

                                                            One Kind of Roselle

Most of these refugees are from the farming society in Myanmar. Agriculture was their main job back in their country.  Therefore, creating a community garden is more than foods and economy for them because the garden (land) makes connection the two cultures namely the Chin culture (farming culture) and the U.S culture (high tech culture) together.  Moreover the human spirit is always connected with natures such as land, water, forest, plants, trees, fountain, mountain and pond so on and so forth in the Chin tribal culture. The garden promotes and creates stronger spirit for the Chin Christians in Columbus. The garden creates a better relationship among the people in the community. It creates a sense of Christian values such as love, kindness, helping one another, sharing things and unity in the community.

The Chin Community Garden is so important for the immigrants for their psychological, physical, spiritual social and mental health. One can see that the garden reduces the stress of a person in many ways today. At the same time the garden saves hundreds of dollars for the Chin families. Some of the vegetables were sold to other Chins in Kentucky areas.

                                                     The Leaf of Pumpkin (Mai-an)

The garden was sponsored by the Franklin Park and Conservatory. Mr. Bill Dawson, Kate Matheny (Grant Coordinator) and Lori Murphy (a student at Ohio State University) helped creating this garden. Franklin Park and Conservatory spent $7,300.00 total for creating this garden for 2011 and 2012. The garden is fenced by Graves Fence Company.  The Scotts Miracle Grow Company donated more than 220 bags of top soils for the garden in 2012. Today the Chin Community Garden is so successful.

                                     Pumpkin, tomato, roselle and pepper

The garden has a long history. It was in the place of an old house which was probably built with stones and bricks. The land was filled with small and big stones, bricks and sand when the farmer plowed the field in the summer of 2011. It was impossible to create the garden in that time. The famer who plowed the field abandoned the garden because of stones, bricks and sand. But the Emmanuel Chin Baptist Church youth voluntarily picked up the stones and bricks about 1-2 tones. Finally the garden was successfully created in the spring of 2012.

There are about 75 Chin families in the ECBC in 2013. The Chins are hard workers. They love farming, gardening and planting vegetables. They plant variety of plants such as spicy, cabbage, four kind of anthur (roselle), hmaihrem (little pumpkins), hamhhmui (Chin mint), putinan, kamphe (a native mint-plant in the Chin State) and mai-an (pumpkin leave), zungpate-thi (lady finger) and Chin egg plants etc. The plants are so good; they are pretty big and tall. The soil of Ohio is pretty good and suitable for those kinds of tropical plants. Some plants are much larger and taller in Ohio than in Chin States, Myanmar. The garden is in the southwest side of the city. It is about 4 miles from where the Chin people live. The Chin people love it and enjoy it every day. They feel Columbus their new homes now.

The garden benefits the Chin community a lot. It gives them a great joy and peace. It reduces our stress. It heals our loneliness. Economically it saves a lot of money for the immigrants. It connects friends, relatives and church members. The garden produces a lot of the Chin cultural foods and that benefits the entire community today. The garden also makes Columbus greener and a better place to live. 

Recently the garden was closed because of land swap. The old garden site will be used for the new school building. So the new garden is near the building of Children's service. The new garden is on the other side of the old garden.

Garden looking from south side