About a year ago, having a community garden in Selma was just a thought, but after a lot of hard work and organizing, those thoughts have turned into action.

Clay Carmichael, founding member of the Blackbelt Benefit Group and Grow Selma, said it has taken much effort from the organization and the community, but the garden is officially underway.

“We’re starting to be able to use it for what we’ve been planning to use it for, even though it’s not anywhere near completed,” Carmichael said. “We’re still in the beginning stages. We’ve got to buy the property before we plan on doing any big work to it. We’re kind of searching out grants and stuff like that right now, hoping to be able to buy the property at the end of the year. Once we do that, we can start doing some major work to it.”

Although the landscaping and construction will come later, the group has already laid the foundation and planted some vegetables, and Carmichael said he is hoping for a good fall harvest. The organization is planning to have a farm to table dinner at Spencer Farm Oct. 17, and they are hoping to use mostly what they have grown in the garden.

“We’re planting some seeds now,” he said. “We’re trying to grow most of our food for the dinner, so that’s another reason that we’re planting late and hoping for a good fall harvest.”

Carmichael said the garden has many goals in mind, but education is the number one goal.

“We have a lot of goals,” he said. “Overall, our goals are all educational. Health wise just to get people out there and work and moving and bring home healthy food and eat it. And [to] have a nice place where people can come and fellowship and just come and enjoy themselves.”

Although they just planted the seeds Monday and Tuesday, they are hosting a group of kids from Sawyerville Wednesday to teach them a few things about gardening.

“We’re just going to do a little class with them, show them how to plant stuff,” Carmichael said. “We’re actually starting to get some educational stuff out there.”

In the long run, Carmichael said the group would like to teach people in the community about the economics of gardening.

“We want to teach the economic side of it too, growing the food and selling the food and trying to use that to make money for the garden itself to pay for the everyday operations,” Carmichael said.

But for now, the organization is just having fundraisers and inviting the community to come out and help, and they are crossing their fingers for a positive harvest in the fall.

“It is nice to be able to get things planted now,” Carmichael said.

“The plan is to keep things planted constantly in there. We want to keep things growing as long as we can, and we just hope for a really good, nice harvest come October.”