SATELLITE BEACH, Fla. — Since it was created in 2017, the Logos Community Garden has been a place where Satellite Beach residents can go to grow and harvest their own food.
Located in DeSoto Park, the garden was created as a green achievement target for the City of Satellite Beach’s Sustainability Action Plan. It hosts 19 garden beds that can be rented and used by residents.
Satellite Beach city naturalist Susan Skinner said the garden also includes an open garden bed that anyone from the community can harvest food from.
“For Satellite Beach, we are focused on the environment and being sustainable,” she said. “So this garden is one more way we can raise awareness about how our practices affect more than ourselves.”
Skinner said the garden creates a community food system where people are able to grow their own food — something one of the city’s youngest gardeners loves being able to do. Every day after school, 11-year-old Damien Ashe tends to his bed at the community garden.
“I water it and then I just pick some weeds and then I just really look around,” he said. “I like looking around and learning about my varieties of vegetables.”
Ashe started gardening last year in the fifth grade after helping his teacher grow and take care of a basil plant.
“One day we made pesto,” Ashe said. “It was really good and I just, like, wanted to garden. So, then, I got some pots back in my backyard and then that’s where I have my herbs like my basil, my mint.”
This year for his birthday, Ashe asked to rent one of the beds at the Logos Community Garden. Now, he tends to the bed every day — picking weeds, watering plants and checking for pests.
“I look on my lettuce, under my lettuce, to see if there's any eggs that I need to wipe off, so then there’s no pests there,” Ashe said.
Since the summer, Ashe said he has grown lettuce, bell peppers, green beans and tomatoes — and he even grew sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving.
When deciding what to plant, Ashe said he always has his family in mind, and dedicates half of his garden bed to the kinds of vegetables his grandpa likes.
“My grandpa loves carrots, and he eats them almost every day,” Ashe said. “So, I just planted a lot of carrots and dedicated one half to that.”
Ashe said his dream is to have a large garden where he has fresh produce to pick every day. In fact, renting another garden bed in the garden is on the top of his Christmas wish list, so he can continue to grow more food.
“I thought that it was just great that he was thinking of others,” Skinner said of Ashe. “It’s not just for himself or his enjoyment.”
Ashe said the community garden provides him with a space to continue honing his new skill.
“It’s a good skill to have because you never know what happens, and if you are just off on your own, then gardening would be a good skill, because you can grow your own food,” he said.
Ashe said you don’t have to be a pro to start gardening — you can start small, and he encourages anyone interested to give it a try.
“You don't always have to be, like, a master gardener and have the best green thumb,” he said. “If you don’t like it, that’s fine. But I encourage you to at least try it. It’s really fun and peaceful.”
The cost to rent a garden bed for a year at the Logos Community Garden is $100. Information about renting a bed and the application can be found on the city's Logos Community Garden website.
The garden located in Satellite Beach is part of the Community Garden Network of Brevard. The network has seven community gardens across the county, including sister gardens Ethos and Pathos. Ethos is located at the Florida Institute of Technology and Pathos is located in Cocoa Beach.
More information about the garden network is available here.
Reagan Ryan is a 2023-2024 Report for America Corps Member, covering the environment and climate across Central Florida for Spectrum News 13. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.