EPHRATA - Jenny Sieg walks beside a recently cleared piece of land in Ephrata, pointing toward the south end of the land.

"Those piles will be moved," she points to piles of soil and debris along the edge of the lot. "We'll have our (garden) beds along the back, so people can access (them) through the alley. The other half of the lot will be cover crops, so something like buckwheat, something where it keeps the weeds down for us."

Sieg is one of the people helping to organize Ephrata's community garden, located at the corner of Fourth Avenue Southwest and C Street Southwest. The project is part of the Grant County Health District's Healthy Communities Project. Sieg is a co-chair for the healthy eating subcommittee.

They plan to start with 18 raised beds, which can be rented for $10 a season. The raised beds will be 4 feet by 12 feet, she said. People can plant anything except for trees in the rented spaces. People can rent the beds through the Ephrata Parks and Recreation department.

"The beds will be rented out, so people can rent that out for the whole season, which will go March through October," Sieg said. "This year, May through October, since we're just getting started."

The garden also features a ground-level garden, tended by volunteers. They plan to donate the vegetables from the ground-level garden to the Ephrata Food Bank, she said.

"We'll take a section and we'll rototill it under and that won't be in a specific container," she said. "So that will have easier things like corn and pumpkins and squash, peas, things like that."

The project started after Sieg, an Ephrata Park and Recreation Commission member, went to the state Park and Recreation Conference two years ago, she said. One of the sessions dealt with community gardens.

"I was just sitting there listening to all this great information and then wondering why we didn't have one in Ephrata. It just didn't make sense," Sieg said. "So I came back because I immediately started thinking about the various empty lots in town and this was my first choice."

Sieg wanted to give community members who don't have the opportunity to have a garden a chance to have one.

"I just thought that healthy eating needs to be a priority for families," she said. "As part of park and recreation and as a member of the community, I wanted to do whatever I could to help make that possible for any family. Let a child see from start to finish how things grow because not all kids understand that concept either."

When she came back, she found a land owner, an Ephrata businessman, and asked if they would be willing to work with the commission to create a community garden, she said. They were more than willing to help, but at the time there wasn't any money to start the project.

"We had interest, but nothing financial to back it and get it started," she said. "So it sat on the back burner until the health district received a healthy communities grant, and through that we have three different workgroups, and one of the workgroups is healthy eating, so part of the healthy eating workgroup is to develop the community garden."

When community members met to discuss using the grant, Sieg found other people were interested in starting a community garden as well.

"There were a lot of people in town that were excited about a garden," she said. "So that gave us the ability to develop an infrastructure for it and to have financial backing to get it up and going."

Two businesses donated supplies to build the raised beds and various farmers donated compost, mulch and top soil, she said. Community members volunteered time and equipment.

"It's gone from, 'Oh, I have this vision,' to 'Wow, there's a lot of people who want to help and have the same vision,' which is nice because that is the whole point of it. We wanted community buy-in because we want it available to everyone," she said. "Right now, it's here, so it's fairly centrally located, but in the future, we would love to see one on each hill in town, and others in downtown, so that hopefully families wouldn't have to walk more than one mile to get to a garden."

The garden furthers the goal of healthy eating by helping to educate people about what's available to them, Sieg said. The work group also plans to provide education on preparing vegetables and the benefits of what they can grow.

"We can't just hand out fruits and vegetables and expect everyone to know what to do with it," she said. "So, there will be an education piece to go along with the donations that are made to the food bank."

The group plans to finish the garden between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on April 28 and is looking for volunteers to help complete the project. Various community groups and individuals are coming in to help assemble the beds.

"People can come May 1 and start planting," she said.

For more information on the April 28 event, call 509-766-7960, ext. 20 or send an email to healthycommunityephrata@gmail.com.