Limelight Community Garden hosts grand opening

Growing plants isn't a speedy process, and neither is growing a garden. 

Volunteer Tracie Troxler insisted the Limelight Community Garden start with a foundation for healthy soil.

As multiple layers of mulch were placed in the ground, amid waiting periods for free mulch deliveries from ChipDrop, property co-owner Kim Livengood says she found herself asking, “Can’t we just start?”

“She is more patient than me, and I think that's part of the love for gardening," Livengood said. "It takes time to grow something, so that's what I've been enjoying the process of, learning to be patient."

Attendees viewed the results of patience as the Limelight Community Garden hosted its grand opening on April 29, with supporters gathering for champagne and a look at the space's progress.

Photo by Ian Swaby

Attendees could stroll the space to find sunflowers and vegetable-producing plants, although there was plenty of ground that remains to be covered. 

Livengood said with the $1,900 raised in this year’s Giving Challenge, there are now enough funds to purchase flower beds for all who would like to use them in the garden.

The garden, described as a nonprofit effort, is entirely volunteer-run and allows membership, which includes a plot and a key to the space, for $40 a year.

Livengood said the hope with that project is that it would create a space to add to the vision of the Limelight District, an evolving neighborhood with an emphasis on small businesses and artists.

She also said it would revitalize a space she says originally contained discarded materials, including tires and roofing debris.

Photo by Ian Swaby 

After leasing the property for the garden, Livengood and her mother, Judy Alexander, pursued the chance to purchase it, which they did in 2023 for $400,000.

However, when the project began, the site had not yet received city zoning approval for use as a community garden, Livengood said, which meant they faced fines. 

She credited commissioners Jen Ahearn-Koch and Kathy Kelley Ohlrich, the latter of whom attended the opening, with spearheading the effort that led to an approval by the City Commission.

A portion of the 12,750-square-foot space serves as additional parking for The Bazaar on Apricot and Lime, the business across the street which Livengood and Alexander also co-own. 

Livengood said that as a stakeholder in the community of Sarasota’s Limelight District, the garden was a natural addition.

“It's an extension of just the overall vision, and it makes us a little different,” she said. “It sets us apart. I mean, we're never going to be downtown Sarasota. We're downtown edge."

Photo by Ian Swaby

The garden has drawn a team of volunteers, one of whom is Teresa Stone, an artist who is a vendor at The Bazaar. Stone created a mural on a fence at the edge of the property, after approval was received from the owner. 

Stone said she wanted to bring a sense of green to the space, even before it fully takes shape as a garden. 

“I don't like the word whimsical, but I'm a whimsical artist. I love almost like a fairyland feeling,” she said. “(The garden) is not always going to be full of beautiful green life, because it's working, it's building, and it's growing, so that was kind of like an inspiration, like, I wanted a lot of color there, and lushness.”

Photo by Ian Swaby

Meanwhile, in April, the Sarasota County Butterfly Club contributed the first $500 grant it has offered through its Butterfly Garden Grants Program, which provides free butterfly-attracting plants.

Volunteer Tracie Troxler, founder and executive director of Sunshine Community Compost, has also been instrumental to the effort. 

She has helped lead the work, which just in the last two months finally came to involve the addition of plants.

Troxler had previously been involved with two other local gardens, and she says she wants to figure out how to bring more gardening spaces to the city. 

She said the space will serve as a “little oasis” where people can bring in ecology, make soil, grow food, and compost. She also says people will hopefully have the opportunity to learn about local ecology, gardening and local food.

She says when it comes to gardening, there is “a never-ending body of wisdom to tap into.”

“There's always more to learn and know and share, but we’re just going to take it one step at a time,” she said. “We’re going to work together. I feel like those that have less gardening knowledge, we want to give more gardening knowledge. They will have more gardening knowledge they can invest that into the community, because everybody's knowledge ripples out.”