Bhutanese community garden expands to feature other nationalities
Okra, beans, pumpkins and more: Bhutanese community expands huge community garden on Northeast side in lawn of North YMCA. Gardeners from 10 nations work the soil there.
The New American Community Garden, featuring 188 plots, celebrated its grand opening on July 25.The garden, part of the Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio’s Food and Agricultural Program, serves growers from 10 different countries.Funding for the project comes from a variety of sources, including the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the Ohio Department of Agriculture.For many Bhutanese refugees, gardening offers a connection to their homeland and a therapeutic outlet.
Freshly picked amaranth, African night shade, roselle and other produce fill the boxes of a new community garden that is helping Bhutanese and other gardeners in Columbus plate the traditional dishes of their cultures.
The New American Community Garden that opened July 25 at 5400 Karl Road carries organically grown produce not easily found in central Ohio’s big-box grocers. The grand opening buzzed with talk of Bhutanese cooking, pricing and the harvest that stocked a handful of shelves at the roadside farm stand.
“This garden is a wonderful addition to the community that shows the beauty of people building some green space. Before this, it was just a big lawn mowed on a regular basis. I lived in this community for 25 years. This land is a tremendous resource for the beautification of our community,” said Michael Coté, who works for Forest Park Civic Association that represents about 2,700 homes in Northland.
The New American Community Garden is one of four gardens within the Food and Agricultural Program, a local gardening program started about a decade ago by the Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio (BCCO), an immigrant advocacy organization founded in 2009. The four gardening sites include 188 garden plots, including 90 in-ground beds (about 300 square feet) and 98 raised beds (about 8 feet by 4 feet).
The New American Community Garden took two years to complete. It required a lengthy process of covering the soil with plastic sheets to suppress weed growth and prepare the soil for planting, installing water lines and faucets, leasing of the garden space from the property owner and seeking funding for the fences.
The grand opening celebrated the garden serving a diverse group of growers, as it was originally serving only Bhutanese growers in the beginning when the land was provided in 2023, said Kamal Adhikari, Food and Agricultural Program coordinator of BCCO.
Now, gardeners from 10 nations till the soil and plant crops.
The land in the New American Community Garden was provided by Community Montessori Columbus in 2023, and growers began working on 20 plots inside the garden in 2024. In 2025, the garden expanded to 80 plots. It is located next to the North YMCA gardening site, which was the first community garden in the BCCO Food and Agricultural Program. The first garden originally included 20 families, but today, undefined, said Sudarshan Pyakurel, executive director of the Bhutanese Community of Central Ohio.
In the Food and Agricultural Program, about 100 families and homeowners are actively gardening across the four sites. Among these people 90% of whom are refugees, special immigrant visa holders and asylum seekers, with the rest being naturalized citizens. People have access to the gardening sites at all times and can decide what time of the day they would like to stop by. The gardeners are from 10 countries: Bhutan, Nepal, Cameroon, Afghanistan, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Burma, Uganda and Liberia, Adhikari said.
The Food and Agricultural Program thrived through funding from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Block program, Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District as well as other federal, state and county funds. The Ohio Department of Agriculture approved a BCCO grant application and passed it on to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), where the application is under review.
The funding supports Bhutanese refugees to practice gardening, harkening to the farming that is essential to everyday living in Bhutan.
Many Bhutanese refugees came to Columbus between 2009 and 2025, making the city home to the largest concentration of Bhutanese people outside of Bhutan. Bhutanese people who were part of the Hindu minority in their nation became refugees in the late 1980s and 1990s, after an ethnic cleansing in their nation led to their arrest, torture, and deportation. Some spent 15 to 20 years in refugee camps in Nepal before coming to the United States. Gardening is a healing process for the refugees, easing their traumas, displacement and disconnecting with the land. The gardening program provides an outlet for the elderly refugees to make new friends and bond with others through a familiar way of lifestyle in farming.
“Because we really miss our country, we like to work in the garden. I have old parents, mother and father-in-law and they like to work here, plowing, farming and watering the plants,” said Ani Khadka, 40, who moved from a refugee camp in Nepal to Columbus in 2011. Khadka and her family grow pumpkin vines, okra, bean, bitter melon, tomato and many other plants in her garden sustaining the family of 12. “In our country, we never went to the store and bought vegetables, we have big farms and different beans, tomatoes and chili.”
The New American Farm Stand, that took place July 25 was the BCCO first kick-off farm stand. It will continue to run from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Fridays from Aug. 8 to Sept. 26 at the North YMCA parking lot at 5400 Karl Road. A farmer’s market is expected to begin in mid-June of 2026.
Donna Chang is a reporting intern for The Dispatch. She can be reached at dchang@gannett.com.