With help from local volunteers and a grant from The Home Depot Foundation, the Greater Topsail Community Garden is expanding its harvest and its impact.
Photography by Amy Fowler Shores
On any given Tuesday or Thursday morning, a small but dedicated group of volunteers gathers in Hampstead to plant seeds, pull weeds, turn compost and harvest vegetables that will feed neighbors they may never meet. This is the Greater Topsail Community Garden.
Part of the garden’s official mission is to combat food insecurity. But board president Sandi Monroe has something to add: She wants it to be a place to build community among those who live, work and play in the Topsail area.
Sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Topsail Island and the Surf City Rotary Club, the garden was founded in 2023 to grow fresh produce for donation to the Pender County–based nonprofit organization Share the Table. Its first harvest was in March 2024. Since its inception, the garden has produced 156 harvests, generated $39,529 in value, and created the equivalent of 4,192 meals, all made possible with 7,478 volunteer hours.
Now the Greater Topsail Community Garden will have an even greater impact, thanks to a generous grant from The Home Depot in Jacksonville.
Last summer, the garden experienced a diminished harvest because of a heat wave. The garden’s outgoing director, Paula Romanowski, had a vision of a hoop garden system to help prevent something similar from happening again. Hoop garden systems act as miniature greenhouses, protecting plants from frost, wind, sun and pests.
It was a great idea, but it was too expensive.
“It was thousands and thousands of dollars,” Monroe says. “And of course, we don’t have that kind of money. We’re a nonprofit, we have a shoestring budget.”
But the system sounded like just what they needed, so Monroe spent some time thinking about how it might be possible. She reached out to a friend of hers, Cory Sydes, who also works with Monroe at the Topsail Island Longboard Association and is the store manager at The Home Depot in Jacksonville. Monroe was hopeful that maybe The Home Depot would agree to fund one of the garden’s dozens of raised beds.
“Cory said, ‘Let’s write up the whole thing. All they can do is say no, right?’” Monroe recalls.
Together, Monroe and Sydes wrote up the grant and submitted it to The Home Depot Foundation. Their request was approved right away. Better yet, the foundation agreed to fund all 40 garden beds.
“It happened so quickly, and the generosity was overwhelming,” Monroe says. “We could not be more thrilled.”
Over a two-day period from April 22 to 23, Team Depot volunteers assembled and installed structures alongside dozens of community volunteers for the 40 garden beds.
Since 2011 Team Depot, The Home Depot’s associate-led volunteer force, has worked with more than 15,000 nonprofits to address the immediate needs within local communities.
“This project means a lot to Home Depot Store #3655 because giving back is a core value for our associates, and we are proud to support a direct lifeline for our neighbors,” the company shared in a statement.
“We’re hoping that it significantly increases the amount of produce that we can donate this year,” Monroe says. “Every dollar that we save Share the Table by providing fresh produce, they can put towards milk and cheese and meat and other services that they provide to our neighbors in Pender and Onslow counties.”
Monroe says they have an “if you build it, they will come” sort of mentality with the garden.
“That’s how it has been all along,” she says. “We have a vision, we start putting it in motion, put it out there into the universe, and the community, the businesses and the people step up and make it happen.”
That spirit is evident on a weekly basis, with volunteers who do anything from plant seeds to paint tool sheds.
“Everything is done through the loving kindness of our volunteers who show up because they want to help,” Monroe says. “And then through that, in return, they walk away with a sense of community, a sense of doing good for our neighborhoods and friendships and learning a little bit about gardening that you didn’t know.”
The garden thrives not just with the contributions of expert and amateur gardeners, but on a wide range of contributions from the community.
Monroe says Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Treasure donated staff time to design the logo for the garden and build the tool shed. The Topsail Island Association of Realtors gave them a grant for a Little Free Library at the garden, which they fill with children’s books and gardening books. A Raleigh-based artist led a community project to paint a mural on the tool shed, and The Home Depot also donated all of the paints and brushes for that project.
And the Greater Topsail Community Garden is always welcoming more volunteers.
“You don’t have to know anything about gardening,” Monroe says. “You just have to want to help in some way.”
GROW TOGETHER!
The Greater Topsail Community Garden
282 Valhalla Way, Hampstead
Those interested in providing volunteer resources or making a donation can email: TopsailNCCommunityGarden@gmail.com
