Lansing woman makes an impact by bringing gardening to the city

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) – If you do any gardening at home, you know how rewarding it can be to see things grow.

If you plant vegetables, the fruits of your labor are especially sweet, as we found out from a woman who is making an impact with her green thumb.

Mary Seeterlin gets overjoyed about okra, pumped about egg plant, she gushes over garlic, and raves about the rhubarb.

She’s equally fond of all the onions, cabbage, broccoli, peppers, lettuce and tomatoes in the Cristo Rey Community Garden, right behind the Cristo Rey Community Center in north Lansing.

Seeterlin adopted the garden three years ago, and with her cultivating care, the community garden is now thriving.

Mary says it’s been her calling to help make an impact on Lansing’s urban desert, where there’s just not enough food in the inner city.

The neighborhoods in need, around Cristo Rey Community Center, is where she found her planting purpose, producing free produce, for those who would normally go without.

“You have 200 people come through the doors every day… and we have one rack of vegetables, and it disappears very quickly,” Seeterlin says.

Mary is quick to point out, she does have horticulture help… from neighborhood volunteers, and people in the corporate community who volunteer at the garden on Mondays.

For Mary Seeterlin, this community garden is her classroom, and the good will she teaches is ripe for the picking.

“We harvested basil on Monday, and this woman came in with four kids, and she had a whole bucket of it, and I wasn’t sure what she was going to do with all that basil, but ya know that’s why we do this… to feed the poor,” Seeterlin says.

If you want to volunteer at the Cristo Rey Community Garden, contact the Cristo Rey Community Center at 1717 N. High Street in Lansing (517) 372-4700.

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