Liz Hill NGC Award Winner
At the BGC Annual Meeting & Luncheon, Liz Hill was awarded a Certificate of Merit from the National Garden Club and a $100.00 prize in the category of Edible Gardening.
“The absolute best gift you can give someone is one of healthy food, no matter how big or small, and the satisfaction you receive will make it all so worthwhile.”
Liz’s accomplishments as a local gardener are many. She volunteers in projects with her local garden club, works on club enrichment programs, volunteers, and participates in events. She attends local club and state meetings and supports the state organization in their fundraising efforts.
Her personal desire is serving others with food shortage in her conservation and gardening efforts and personal distributions of harvest vegetables through self-invented projects.
“An effort to engage in the love of nature sent me on an exploration adventure of home vegetable gardening. The journey began when I was seven (7) years of age in my mother’s garden. Now 70 years later, modeling conservation practices and behaviors learned by family members, through observation, reading and advice by experts and mentors has given me refuge in the quietness of a well - tended garden. It leads my spirit to a genuine desire to have an influence on food insecurity. Gardening annually for the past twenty (20) years in the same location has sparked my interest in searching where there was a lack of resources and inability for people to access. My goal was to help people in my community receive vegetables grown from my garden to help with the hunger crisis using conservation techniques to keep the soil enriched producing larger crops to accomplish my mission.”
“In late spring of 2024 and during the summer, food was taken to the local food shelf and continued until more local gardeners/veggie farmers also started bringing in donations to the food shelf. I switched gears and concentrated on filling cardboard flats and placing them beneath the mailbox clusters at a mobile home park near me and regularly supplied a brief list of families and friends that did not have gardens to other gardeners. “
“Folks were so appreciative and occasionally would approach me when I was distributing produce to tell me what they were cooking with what they took. I thoroughly enjoyed the interactions, making it a fun project.”