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Cathy Sperling, left, and Helen Michaels, right, look at the plans for the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.
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Congregation B'nai Israel's new garden is the latest in environmental stewardship program

THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT

Congregation B'nai Israel's new garden is the latest in environmental stewardship program

Eighteen faith communities are currently participating in Sacred Grounds:

■ Church in Toledo-Westside Community

■ First Unitarian Church of Toledo

■ Friendship Baptist Church

■ Glass City Church of Christ

■ Hindu Temple of Toledo

■ Islamic Center of Greater Toledo

■ Monroe Street UMC

■ New Life Church of God in Christ

■ People's Missionary Baptist Church

■ Congregation B'nai Israel

■ Queen of Apostles School

■ Redemption Baptist Church

■ Salem Lutheran Church

■ Sisters of St. Francis

■ Sylvania UCC

■ The Farmhouse (Metamora UMC)

■ The University Church

■ Warren AME Church


It's a shofar, actually, the ritual instrument blown at the Jewish High Holy Days.There's poetry in the garden, and perhaps especially so in the new bed outside Sylvania's Congregation B'nai Israel. There hoary vervain, golden alexander and wild blue lupine are sinking their roots into a bed that's deliberately shaped like a horn.

“When it gets blown, it's a wakeup call, literally, right?” Helen Michaels explained, referring to the period of contemplation and reflection that begins at Rosh Hashanah.

She sees parallels in the garden, which she's taken a lead in designing and developing over the better part of the past year. It's one of the latest established under a program that encourages houses of worship to embrace their role as environmental stewards.

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“It brings to faith communities kind of a wakeup call,” Ms. Michaels said of Sacred Grounds, “reminding us that we've always supposed to have been custodians of the planet.”

Run through the National Wildlife Federation, Sacred Grounds began sinking its roots into northwest Ohio in 2017. Toledo became a second pilot for the native plant-focused program, which had caught the attention of locals following its initial launch in the Chesapeake Bay.

The program asks houses of worship to leverage their often expansive grounds, tapping into a responsibility to care for the natural world that's shared across faith traditions.

Under Sacred Grounds, that responsibility looks specifically like the installation of a native plant garden, where deep roots filter water runoff, and where flowers and foliage provide habitats for native wildlife and support pollinators like bees and butterflies. There's also an educational and outreach element to certification under the program.

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Marilyn DuFour is a senior environmental specialist with Toledo's Division of Environmental Services. She and Hal Mann were influential in bringing the program to Toledo. It's since spread to additional communities, with a national rollout still in the plans.

“It's very exciting to be a part of helping [the National Wildlife Federation] to lay the groundwork and take this wonderful project elsewhere,” Ms. DuFour said.

Eighteen faith communities are currently participating in Sacred Grounds in Toledo, seven of which are already certified, Ms. DuFour said. Projects are generally grant-funded, with the most recent round of mini-grants provided through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Five Star and Urban Waters Restoration Grant Program.

The congregation board matched funds at Congregation B'nai Israel.

Congregation B'nai Israel joins Queen of Apostles School, University Church and Redemption Baptist Church in getting their hands dirty installing gardens this spring. The latter helped to retrofit Jamera and Percy’s Bed of Beauty and Love within the Ironwood Community Garden, a long-standing community garden on church-owned grounds.

Ms. Michaels, who in her secular life teaches botany and restoration ecology courses at Bowling Green State University, said she'd long known about the Sacred Grounds program through her involvement in the native plant-focused Wild Ones. But she said the timing for the community project didn't seem right for her own congregation, somewhat ironically, until community became hard to come by within the past year.

Congregational leaders onboard, she put out a call for volunteers in a fall bulletin.

“It's a hopeful thing, and it's something we could do at a distance,” Ms. Michaels said of the gardening project. “We came out here and sat in a circle with our face masks, and transformed what was a vegetable garden into this.”

“This” is now a cheery plot beside the parking lot, where, as Ms. Michaels mentioned, the congregation had once maintained several raised beds. After they laid the groundwork in the fall, volunteers began planting just in May, settling their plugs into the locations they had already carefully plotted out with popsicle sticks.

A short path and wheelchair accessible seating area is also in the works, where visitors can settle for some gardenside contemplation. As are some complementary beds alongside the main garden in the shape of the shofar.

The volunteers have been conscientious in selecting which native species they want in their garden over the past several months, and where each of an estimated 250 plants should be placed within the bed. Sacred Grounds provided a mentor in Denise Gehring, who helped them work through many of these planning considerations, and Ms. Michaels explained that their garden as a whole is intended to benefit pollinators and wildlife.

They've mapped out what will be blooming in the spring, the summer and fall, with a particular emphasis on the fall.

They're looking to impress for the Jewish High Holy Days — and to offer their own colorful take on the wakeup call of the shofar by Rosh Hashanah.

Contact Nicki Gorny at ngorny@theblade.com.

First Published June 15, 2021, 11:14 a.m.

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Cathy Sperling, left, and Helen Michaels, right, look at the plans for the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Nancy Goldberg, left, and Debbie Perlmutter, right, stop to laugh at a joke while they work in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Hoary Vervain which will be planted in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Nancy Goldberg, stops to laugh at a joke while she works in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Wild Ginger is planted in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Howard Rosenberg, left, and Cathy Sperling, right, work together in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Nancy Goldberg works in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Nancy Goldberg works in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Nancy Goldberg works in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Ann Rosenberg works in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Ann Rosenberg works in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
A columbine plant planted in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Volunteers work in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Ann Rosenberg works in the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
Helen Michaels holds the plans for the new garden at the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania on May 27, 2021.  (THE BLADE/AMY E. VOIGT)  Buy Image
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