There’s a change in the atmosphere that surrounds you when stepping into the Merrill Community Sharing Garden. Insect buzz and birdsong fill the air. Plants cover the ground. And Beloit College students are a part of this ecosystem.

The Ousley event on October 2nd invited students and faculty to receive a guided tour of this local community garden, a physically small part of the Merrill Neighborhood in Beloit that creates an outsized impact. It provides students with the opportunity to undertake work that supports a vital community resource. The tour was one of three events brought to Beloit College’s campus by the Ousley Scholar-in-Residence program. Kaelyb Lokrantz, Community Services Manager at Community Action, Inc., the nonprofit that runs the garden, facilitated the tour.

Since its inception 18 years ago, the garden has grown to be an essential part of the Merrill community. Merrill neighborhood is a food desert, which means there aren’t easily accessible options for healthy, nutritious food. The garden provides a valuable resource not only to its residents, but to the college through partnerships.

Growing carrots, zucchini, peppers, lettuce, various fruits, and much more, the garden ensures community access to nutrition and student access to community-based learning, connecting with one of the college’s schools meant to prepare students for meaningful careers, the School of Environment and Sustainability.

Tour participants weaved through the vegetable rows and cover crops, which are plants rotated to replenish soil after its nutrients are depleted by other plants. Plants and soil give and take, and the community does too.

The garden influences the community, and the community influences the garden, growing with help from volunteers and community suggestions offered about what could be changed to better serve the neighborhood. Anyone is free to come and take what they need.

“…[B]eing part of something outside the Beloit bubble, I think it’s a really cool thing,” says Nate Otis ’25.

Nate works at the garden as an intern for Community Action Inc. through the Community Connections program. These courses are experiential learning opportunities that bring the college and community together.

The garden was once a pair of vacant lots. Now, there’s a sense of life and purpose that continues to foster opportunities shared by the college and the community.