United Cerebral Palsy opens garden at SOS Club

Right now, it’s a bumpy patch of land covered with dead or dying grass, littered with dirty, long-ago-lost tennis balls.

But give it six months to a year and this caterpillar will be a butterfly, said Brad Post, president of the board of directors of the Sportsmen of Stanislaus Club in Modesto.

Post was among the speakers as United Cerebral Palsy of Stanislaus and Tuolumne Counties broke ground Monday morning on its community garden for persons with disabilities at the club on Sunset Avenue just south of John Thurman Field.

The SOS, the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau and the Future Farmers of America are sponsors of the garden project, which is kicking off with UCP but will be open to anyone with disabilities.

“We’re really pleased to turn this useless piece of dirt, that I didn’t even know we had, into a thing of beauty,” Post told the small crowd at the groundbreaking, which included participants in UCP’s work program and community-integration program.

Among them was Brent Whisenhunt of Turlock, who on Tuesdays works in the small garden at the UCP office in that city. Whisenhunt said he enjoys digging in the garden and has helped plant and nurture a variety of plants, fruits and vegetables, including sunflowers, tomatoes and zucchini.

Another UCP client, Margaret Deranian of Modesto, said, “We did a garden class last year and we did tomatoes and zucchini … watermelon and lettuce.” She learned everything from how to plant seeds and apply fertilizer to how to water the pots and harvest the produce, she said.

In the SOS Club garden, Deranian said, she’s looking forward to growing flowers, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash.

The garden will be a mix of trees, row crops and rolling planter boxes that will be placed on an adjacent old tennis court, said UCP executives.

Roger Slingerman, executive director of UCP of Stanislaus and Tuolumne Counties, said he and John Hoskins, the group’s director of development, visited a similar community garden operated on a third of an acre by UCP in Fresno, and figured it would be a “slam dunk” in an agricultural community such as Modesto.

Hoskins, who is the director of aquatics at the SOS Club, knew of the roughly 1/8-acre plot out past the tennis courts and figured it would be ideal. The club basically donated the land to UCP, charging a token $1 a year for insurance purposes, Slingerman said. The Farm Bureau and Central Catholic High School’s FFA program will help till and otherwise prepare the land for gardening.

UCP will provide an agriculturally based class for adults with disabilities that will cover how to grow, harvest and prepare a variety of fruits and vegetables. It also will teach participants work skills needed to understand the farm-to-market business. Slingerman hopes participants will be able to work on selling some of the produce at farmers markets, restaurants, maybe even the SOS Club kitchen.

“It’s something different for them (UCP program participants) and something fun for them, and we’re going to use the vegetables to cook in our kitchen for them, and it’ll be exciting for everybody,” Hoskins said.

A statement from UCP says gardening will be “adaptable so that all functionalities may be able to participate. All work will be purposeful and meaningful to ensure the growth and learning opportunities for the program participants.”

Agencies interested in participating in the garden should contact Hoskins at (209) 577-2122, ext. 111, or jhoskins@ucpstan.org, as should anyone interesting in donating time, materials or money to the project.

This story was originally published May 18, 2015 at 2:47 PM with the headline "United Cerebral Palsy opens garden at SOS Club."