The Community Gardens at the City of Hope Outreach in Conway serve multiple purposes. They are a source of nutritious fruits and vegetables for the organization’s nutrition program, including its Small Market that provides food and other supplies for food-insecure, homeless and low-income individuals and families.
It is a classroom gardening experience for students who participate in CoHO Academy, the organization’s after-school program. Participants help grow food in the gardens from seed to harvest to table as part of the academy’s STEM, nutrition and personal development curriculum.
The gardens are home to various wildlife, including birds, bees, butterflies, frogs and toads. Students in the program crafted toad houses to encourage the amphibians to settle in the gardens to help control pests.
In July 2024, the National Wildlife Federation announced that it had designated the gardens as a Certified Wildlife Habitat through its Garden for Wildlife movement.
The designation was thanks in part to the work of Lana Thurman, who graduated from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts in 2017. Thurman joined CoHO as nutrition director in February 2023. In August 2023, she became an academy instructor, teaching STEM concepts through gardening and nutrition to kindergarten through eighth-graders in the academy.
Thurman is no longer with CoHO and is now in her second semester of law school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law. But her previous work with the garden program continued a passion for organic gardening she developed as a student in the Schedler Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. She helped maintain the Dee Brown Memorial Garden and donated produce to UCA’s food pantry. Thurman also grew fresh produce at the Faulkner County Library while attending UCA.
“My friends and I used these to bake fortified bread and make soups, and then we distributed it by car to the unhoused during harsh winters,” said Thurman, who graduated magna cum laude from UCA with a double major in history and anthropology. “During my senior year, I wanted to have a lasting impact, so as vice president of the Anthropology Club, I designated a plot at the library that continues to produce food for donation to the UCA food pantry.”
She said her background is “rooted in a long family tradition of farming in Blevins, Arkansas. This way of life, which emphasizes sustainability and environmental stewardship, has been in my family for generations.”
In January 2023, she visited the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. A quote from Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated at the hotel on April 4, 1968, that is featured on a plaque at the museum moved Thurman. In the quote, King said that he hoped to be remembered for his actions to “love and serve humanity” rather than any honors he may have received.
“This moment of realization solidified my commitment to serving others. I realized that the true meaning of life was to love and serve humanity,” Thurman said.
That same day, a friend who had helped her on the car runs delivering food in the past told her about the nutrition director opening at CoHO and thought Thurman would be perfect for the job.
“The opportunity to manage my own garden and help those most in need felt like a calling. I knew this was a way to use my skills and passions to serve the community effectively, and so I eagerly applied,” Thurman said.
While serving as an academy instructor in addition to serving as nutrition director, Thurman actively engaged students in garden activities such as an “Adopt a Tree” lesson and a “Planting a Spring Garden” session, helping them learn about the ecosystem and its importance. Students planted trees as well as built birdhouses and squirrel feeders. They kept field journals, documenting plant growth while fostering observations skills and connecting with nature.
“Seeing the students grow their own food from seed to harvest and planting their own trees” was wonderful, Thurman said. The students’ reaction to the gardening experience was the most rewarding part of her CoHO experience. She said the students showed “enthusiasm and curiosity, eagerly engaging in hands-on activities and expressing pride in their contributions to the garden.”
While projects such as the toad houses and tree plantings helped instill a sense of environmental stewardship in the students, they also helped Thurman earn the Certified Wildlife Habitat designation for CoHO’s garden. To earn the certification, a garden should provide natural sources of food, water, cover and places to raise young wildlife and is maintained in a sustainable way that incorporates native plants, conserves water and doesn’t rely on pesticides. The National Wildlife Federation is a conservation organization established in 1936. The Garden for Wildlife program began in 1973.
“CoHO’s Nutrition Program previously focused solely on providing food for people through our free Small Market, but it now also nourishes wildlife as a vibrant Certified Wildlife Habitat, thriving with native plants and diverse species,” Thurman said in a release from the National Wildlife Federation. “This transformation has not only created a haven for wildlife but also fostered a sense of community and environmental stewardship.”
Thurman sees law school as a continuation of her service to humanity. Her goal is to focus on civil rights law.
“My goal is to advocate for marginalized communities and work towards ensuring equal rights and justice for all individuals, particularly those who have faced discrimination and injustice,” she said.