Margaret Harris says she feels closest to God in a garden.

So she and other members of Forest Lake Presbyterian Church decided to go eco-friendly and establish a wildlife habitat garden at the church on Trenholm Road.

She believes this is a first among Presbyterian congregations in the region, and is encouraging others to contemplate similar horticulture efforts.

“We are really trying to do things that are environmentally friendly and take care of God’s earth,” said Harris, who serves on the congregation’s environmental stewardship committee.

The garden will be dedicated Sunday at 10:30 a.m. as part of the church’s Earth Day activities.

The small plot, punctuated by a birdbath, feeders and a Celtic cross, is filled with new flowering plants. Many are “pass-a-longs,” perennials given by church members that attract birds and butterflies.

“For the most part, everything here has a purpose,” Harris said. Purple verbena and lantana, swamp milkweed and butterfly weed lure butterflies and bees; Mexican bush sage is meant to attract hummingbirds.

They hope to encourage songbirds to pass by with sheltering podocarpus shrubs and Japanese silver grass. The gardeners use only pesticide-free loam and nutrients, eschewing chemical weed killers.

For their efforts, the congregation has been certified by the National Wildlife Federation as a backyard wildlife habitat, a designation that anyone with a backyard or small plot of ground can try to obtain.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Ellen Skidmore, is a certified master gardener and strong supporter of the effort.

She’s hoping the garden can be a teaching tool for the congregation’s children as well as the children who attend Forest Lake’s child enrichment center.

“From a theological standpoint, how do we care for God’s earth?” she said.

Harris also has created a larger, fenced garden at the Lexington offices of Trinity Presbytery, where she works as an administrative assistant.

That garden has many of the elements that the S.C. Wildlife Federation, an arm of the national nonprofit, encourages in a Carolina Fence Garden. That garden incorporates elements native to the state.

One of her co-workers and fellow diggers at the presbytery office, Lisa Mallory, is helping to spark a similar habitat effort at her church, Congaree Presbyterian Church in Cayce.

That space would include a prayer garden and a habitat garden, said Mallory, an elder in the Cayce congregation.

“The youth are actually undertaking all of this with the help of the congregation,” she said.

Reach Click at (803) 771-8386.

source : www.thestate.com