Bruce Bye has been going to Bethany Lutheran Church for 49 years. In 2017, he looked at the congregation and realized it was full of people whose skills could help neighbors in Southdale, the area surrounding the church.
Bye and members of the church interviewed 24 people, who brought up 73 different needs. He learned that each month, about one in eight people went without food for a day.
“And in some cases, those are children,” he said. “So if we have land, why not figure out how to be able to utilize that land?”
They turned a grassy area next to the church into a 5,000-square-foot garden. In the first year, they produced 800 pounds of fresh vegetables which they handed out to food pantries and volunteers.
In 2020, Southdale won “Neighborhood of the Year” from Neighborhoods USA, for the garden and the church’s work in the community.
Since then, Bethany Community Garden has doubled in size and added extra plots people can rent to grow their own food. The harvest has gotten bigger each year, too. In 2024, more than 50 people volunteered and they gave away 6,430 pounds of food.
The garden’s success helps fill the Southdale neighborhood’s need for a reliable source of fresh food. But Bye saw plenty more work to be done.
“The garden is just a way to build relationships and start making connections with people in the community,” Bye said. “Yeah, you do provide food to families that are in need, but it’s been amazing as to the connections that we’ve been able to make because of it.”
In 2022, he started the Southdale Neighborhood Association to keep building community and find other opportunities to help neighbors.
Growing beyond the garden
The Southdale Neighborhood Association meets at 7 p.m. the first Thursday of every month at Bethany Lutheran Church, 4702 S. East St. Three times a year, CrimeWatch meetings start at 6 p.m.
Many of the people who come to the neighborhood association meetings learned about it through volunteering at the garden. The group welcomes anyone who works, lives or has an interest in the area.
They do things like neighborhood cleanups, spending time with immigrants who are new to the area and offering career mentorship for young people.
At the March 6 meeting, neighbors filtered in and grabbed snacks and fudge from Bye’s wife. Bye had a laptop propped up on a stack of books, playing YouTube videos of ABBA songs with a microphone angled down toward it. About 10 people showed up.
The mayor’s neighborhood advocate for the area, Delia Novak, asked neighbors what they needed help with and updated them on past requests. Bye passed out a seven-page pamphlet listing goals for the Southeast Indy quality of life plan. On the front of each one, he used a Sharpie to write in all caps: “What catches your eye that you would like to help with?” Each neighbor circled something that interested them.
Reverend Nancy Nyland, Bethany Lutheran’s pastor, circled, “Connect non-English speaking residents to resources for overcoming language barriers.” She asked other neighbors how they could help the Burmese population in their area.
It takes a village to raise a garden
Walking through the Bethany Community Garden now, you’ll see the paths between rows are lined with dark blue canvas. If you look closer, you’ll catch a few words on the fabric: Basketball, Fever, Pacers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the empty seats at Gainbridge Fieldhouse were covered in this canvas.
“My niece works with the Pacers, and so she just said, ‘We have this canvas. They don’t want to throw it away. Can you use it?’” Bye said. The Pacers sent them two pallets of it, folded up. They spread out the fabric and cut it with scissors, on their hands and knees.
Bye explains that the ground is covered in tarps as a way to prepare the soil for planting without needing to till it. They plant cover crops between growing seasons, then use the tarps to kill off those plants, feeding the soil and clearing the beds for the next crop.
Bye has been interested in the environment since he was a kid. He was part of FFA in high school and showed cows in the fair. After studying agriculture in college, he spent his career at Elanco Animal Health developing medicines for animals.
He’s at home in the garden, pointing out the irrigation system and grabbing a handful of compost made from decomposed leaves. The free fertilizer came from a partnership Bye organized with the Beech Grove Department of Public Works.
Beech Grove workers were picking up leaves every fall and putting them in piles at the DPW building. There were so many leaves piling up that they were going to start paying to dump them at the landfill. Now, they bring the leaves to Bethany Community Garden instead, where they break down into rich compost to fertilize the plants.
Bye said he and the Southdale Neighborhood Association are honoring a rich agricultural history in the area. Historically, German immigrants on the south side of Indianapolis grew food and flowers in greenhouses. Bye and the Southdale Neighborhood Organization put together a project to paint four signal boxes in their area, and two of them are designed to honor the historical greenhouses.
“This is an area that at one time provided fresh vegetables to all the people living in Indianapolis,” Bye said. “So in a way, we have the garden. We’re just kind of continuing that tradition.”
How to get your hands dirty
This year, Bye wants to get people to come to a free gardening class series taught by Ginny Roberts, who retired from the Marion County Purdue Extension. You’ll learn about vegetable gardening, native plants, harvesting and cover crops. Classes are planned for April 8, May 6, Aug. 5 and Aug. 26 — show up at 5:45 p.m. for a free meal before class starts at 6.
The community garden’s harvest has grown each year, and Bye wants to continue producing fresh vegetables to send to area food pantries. If you want to volunteer at the garden, Tuesday nights are the time to drop in and help.
There’s also a Southdale neighborhood cleanup on April 19, starting at Bethany Lutheran Church, 4702 S. East St. If you have questions, reach out to Bye at 317-783-7283 or brucebye@gmail.com.
Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young covers services and resources. Contact her at sophie.young@mirrorindy.org.
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