Weaver Creek Park Community Food Forest

We’re excited to share the amazing growth and accomplishments of 2024 at the Weaver Creek Park Community. This year, the space flourished with 500 fruit trees, 90 bustling community garden beds, a new butterfly garden, and many Jovial projects made possible thanks to your support.

Each Saturday, this growing season, we held open and free garden workshops for the public. These workshops were aimed at beginning gardeners and allowed us to spread our love of gardening and growing. We also built a new garden at a local elementary school equipped with automated irrigation and fencing!

Jovial’s youth outreach program made a profound impact, engaging over 3,000 kids across 12 schools through weekly and bi-weekly sessions and school-wide events. From gardening and STEM projects to cooking and health education, children thrived in hands-on experiences that connected them to the environment and healthy living. For example, our school garden-liaison created a ladybug and butterfly workshop, which tracked the insects from their larval and pupal formals to fully emerged adult insects. Another of our favorite classes is the Three Sisters garden laboratory where we support the students in learning about this culturally significant garden as well as with harvesting, preparing, and eating a salad that one dubbed "the best meal I've ever had".

This year wouldn’t have been possible without the dedication of incredible volunteers and groups. Organizations like Surge Youth Group, The Receptionist, Amazon, Encore Electric, Michigan State Alumni, and local Girl and Boy Scout troops joined in to tackle everything from planting seeds to orchard pruning and planting and mulching to building and planting a large butterfly garden to creating trellises in the vineyards.

Vegetables and herbs harvested from the orchard and our backyard programs were delivered to a few different food pantries in the area. We donate everything that we harvest to these programs, in order to support our communities. This year, we ended up nearly at two tons with 3,800lbs of produce delivered! It's a huge amount we were able to provide.

Our summer was a busy time learning about the irrigation system at the orchard, performing repairs, and beginning to create our long-term vision for creating a community food forest. One highlight was that we invited a full waddle of ducks to help us tackle grasshopper management; the ducks had open-access to an all-you-can-eat feast on the insects. It was a fun time, especially because we could incorporate the ducks into our weekly I/DD program, which serves individuals with developmental disabilities.

As summer turned to fall, we celebrated with our biggest fall festival, welcoming 1,250 attendees for garden tours and seasonal activities. Managed by 18 incredible volunteers, the festival was a beautiful capstone to the season. Additional community cleanups reinforced the spirit of connection and teamwork that carried us through the year.

And none of this would be possible with your kind and generous support. On behalf of the Jovial Team, we would like to thank you for making everything we do possible!

Happy Tidings & Warm regards,
- Jovial Concepts