About Us
From Garden to Network: Cultivating Community, Care, and Connection
Our Mission
To foster human dignity, promote the common good, and advance care for creation through gardens rooted in Catholic communities that nourish both body and spirit.
Our Vision
To inspire a vibrant community connected through gardens that nurture spirituality, care for neighbors, and care for creation.
Our Values
Human Dignity
We honor the inherent worth of every person and believe all communities deserve opportunities to flourish.
Hospitality & Community
We cultivate welcoming spaces where people feel valued, connected, and inspired to grow together.
Spirituality
We recognize gardens as spaces of beauty, prayer, reflection, and spiritual nourishment, inspired by our Catholic faith and open to all.
Learning & Discovery
We foster curiosity, hands-on learning, and formation that deepen knowledge, skills, and connection to faith, creation, and one another.
Care for Neighbors
We serve neighbors through acts of nourishment and care.
Care for Creation
We encourage stewardship of God’s creation through sustainable gardening practices that help communities and ecosystems thrive.
Our Story
In spring 2022, Catholic Garden Network (CGN) founder Julene Jarnot began volunteering as coordinator of the vegetable garden at her Catholic parish in Northern Virginia. She led a major expansion and renovation of the space, which now provides fresh produce for the parish food pantry and includes pollinator-friendly and native plants. The garden is also shaped by spiritual elements, including a fence inspired by Abraham’s tent, a symbol of hospitality. Growing up in rural Minnesota, Julene developed an early appreciation for how gardens can bring people together.
Through her experience in the parish garden, Julene came to see how such spaces can become places of nourishment, beauty, and encounter, and a concrete way to live the Works of Mercy: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, comforting the afflicted, and inviting prayer. She also recognized both the challenges and untapped potential of gardens in Catholic settings. This inspired a vision for a network that could connect and support communities engaged in similar work, grounded in shared values of prayerful presence, food justice, care for creation, hospitality, and learning.
Drawing from Catholic Social Teaching and Christ’s words in Gospel of Matthew 25 – “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” – Julene began building Catholic Garden Network in 2024. Today, CGN brings together Catholic parishes, schools, universities, and ministries that feed neighbors, cultivate prayer and encounter, restore habitat with pollinator-friendly and native plants, engage learners of all ages, and strengthen community life.
At a time when many people are seeking deeper connection, beauty, belonging, and meaningful ways to live their faith, gardens offer a hopeful and practical response. They create opportunities to care for creation, serve neighbors, foster intergenerational relationships, and transform ordinary spaces into places of encounter. Catholic Garden Network exists to help these efforts grow and inspire more communities across the country.