Back To The Garden - Tiffany Whichard

Series Introduction

This is the sixth of a 12-part series on community builders who participate in Activate Selma, NC.

The author is Cindy Brookshire, one of four co-founders of Activate Selma.

Tiffany Whichard holds vegetables grown in the garden at Selma Baptist Church.

Back to the Garden

Volunteers of All Ages

“I used to need that food,” says Bryanna Briyith Avila Fuentes, one of three Early College students volunteering in the Selma community garden one Friday morning. She stands with her Rotary Interact Club advisor Amanda Rowland, and friends Sarah Tew and Bryan Vasquez.

Bryanna’s honest words echo Tiffany’s motivation for creating this nonprofit years ago. There was a time in Tiffany’s past, when she was in her 20s, when she was going through a rough patch. “I’d been fortunate to have friends and family step in and help me. I can appreciate that many folks don’t necessarily have that network of support. A lot of them here in Johnston County are at risk of going hungry as a result of similar situations. So at the time, it seemed like a natural fit.”

“Bryanna’s our next youngest certified garden mentor and has been with us all of her high school career,” she adds. “She returns from college on her breaks and goes on to teach other folks.”

Upper left, Bryanna Briyith Avila Fuentes; upper right, Sarah Tew; lower left, Sarah, Bryanna, and Bryan Vasquez; lower right, Amanda Rowland in the Selma community garden.

“Last week,” says Bryanna, “When we went to go drop off the food at St. Ann’s, I feel like what we do does make an impact, because my family used to go get it. So, it’s a full circle moment. There’s been times when I was little, where we went to churches, and picked up produce. It was the same thing, so I’m glad I can do this work now.”

Every Friday Tiffany oversees dozens of volunteers of all ages in the garden, leading orientation, signing them in, supplying water and hydrating fruit snacks, and allowing them to choose among the tasks of the day, based on what they’d like to learn, or feel confident enough to tackle without supervision.

That day’s list includes hilling potatoes, planting peppers, constructing tables for the hoop house, and using a commercial roller to seed wildflowers, making sure the seeds have good ground contact.

“Of course, it’s labor-intensive,” says Sarah Tew, who plans to study geology at NC State in the Fall. “But this is our opportunity to come together in nature and cultivate and grow plants. It’s green, it’s natural. We don’t use pesticides. It’s as organic as possible. It’s very healthy for the mind to get out and be in a community like this, with a shared goal.”

While Bryanna has set a goal of public health studies at UNC Chapel Hill in the Fall, Bryan Vasquez aims to study nursing at East Carolina University.

“I wouldn’t say I was eating too healthy before I started volunteering in the Selma garden,” he admits. “It definitely opened my eyes to try new things, and to be more grateful for what we grow here and distribute to others.”

A Brief Backstory

Tiffany and her husband Darryl, who have always loved being immersed in nature, moved to Johnston County in 2009. They took a few classes at the Johnston Community College Arboretum to get acclimated to the soil differences, insects, and diseases that were common in this area. 

In 2010, the Arboretum established the garden. Beginning in 2012, the staff was in transition. The ethnobotanist was getting ready to retire, while the full-time horticulturist was teaching core classes. As a result, Tiffany stepped into a larger role with the garden in 2012. Around that time, the garden also lost its single source of funding. After becoming autonomous, Tiffany officially took it over in 2014.

Tiffany Whichard, Darryl Whichard, Silvia Caracciolo

For the past years, Harvesting Hope NC has continued administering the Plant a Row for the Hungry program, delivering thousands of pounds of fruits and vegetables to nearby soup kitchens and food pantries. PAR also works with local farms to glean surplus crops. One of their best weapons to defeat the hunger epidemic is education. They offer comprehensive programs using a sustainable, organic approach that is steeped in science.

“We began fundraising in 2016 when the garden was still under the auspices of Minda Daughtry. In the beginning the garden grew, on average, about 800 to 1,200 pounds of produce per year,” says Tiffany. “We’ve increased steadily in both our contributions and combined gleans. In 2023, to give an example, we did 8,700 pounds; in 2024, 9,302 pounds, and in 2025, just shy of 10,000 pounds.”

“We grow on average 25 different vegetable crops, herbs, fruits, and flowers,” she adds. “The foundation of what we do is education. It is the cornerstone of our nonprofit, so 12 years ago I added a weekly educational newsletter for our volunteers. It’s steeped in horticultural science, and covers subjects like beneficial and destructive insects, prevalent diseases, organic amendments, weed identification, tool selection, abiotic stress, environmental impacts, and more. I’m not fancy with anything. Most gardeners aren’t. We also do free programming for low-income families, elementary-aged children, college students with barriers to learning, seniors with limited mobility, and parents that are in transitional housing who have struggled with substance abuse.”

Seeding Roots in Selma

Tiffany began partnering with Selma Baptist Church in 2024.

“I was drawn to Selma because of the really positive changes here, the growing momentum in the community, and the transformation of the downtown area,” she says.

“We had been offered another property, but it was in flux due to legal proceedings, so we determined that it was not suitable for us. We were getting discouraged. I advertised for volunteers on Facebook and mentioned in the post that we were looking for another property in Selma. Someone named Todd Daniels replied that there was a vacant parcel of land behind Selma Baptist Church. But his icon looked so youthful, I did not realize that he was in fact the lead pastor! I thought, ‘Oh, that’s very sweet that one of their youths is trying to be helpful.’”

Pastor Daniels is a former drummer in a rock band, and also leads On Beat, the church’s Drum Ministry, and is an frequent participant in Activate Selma.

“So, it literally took me weeks to clue into the fact that Todd was in fact an adult, and that the parcel is part of the church property.”

Learning from obstacles

The church offers Harvesting Hope NC the use of one of the cleared acres in back of the church, where it owns many wooded acres. Tiffany explains the nonprofit immediately hit their first impediment – a huge one: permitting the installation of a waterline.

“Without question, that was our biggest obstacle,” she recalls. “It is a shared property, so there was no real precedent for the Town of Selma to be able to put in two meters on a single lot. We had a lot of discussion behind that, and eventually we had to reach out to the Mayor. He was gracious and addressed the paperwork situation, which was taking an extremely long time. After that, we realized it would require three contractors, because we had to drill underneath the road, which was under the jurisdiction of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, for access to the water. It was by far one of our biggest expenses that year, and took us months to complete.”

Looking at the lush green and verdant garden today, you would never know there had been such a problem. Corporate and individual donations and grants, written by Tiffany, help pay for expenses, including monthly water bills. Tiffany does not take a salary. She has had help from JCI interns in the past.

“What did the obstacles teach us?” she ponders. “Our team learned a lot of patience and persistence, but we’re grateful for everyone who was involved.”

Currently there is an abnormal to moderate drought in Johnston County that has significant implications for local agriculture. Tiffany is monitoring the drought conditions weekly and following the updates based on precipitation, soil moisture, and vegetation health.

10,000 pounds toward 23,000 food insecure people

In 2025, the Selma garden, along with the flagship garden in Smithfield, produced nearly 10,000 pounds of produce for five local community food agencies: St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Clayton, Smithfield Rescue Mission, First Baptist Church in Smithfield, Hinnant Outreach Center in Micro, and more recently, Pine Level Food Bank.

These five agencies help to serve many of the 23,460 food insecure people in Johnston County with nutritious, fresh food. One in six of our neighbors are struggling with hunger, according to Harvesting Hope NC. Sixteen percent of those, or 8,350, are children. These are people who are often working, trying to pay rent, bills, and medical expenses.

“We educate and lead with compassion,” says Tiffany. “One in six residents here is food insecure in our county, meaning they don’t always know where their next meal is coming from, and the truth is many families that we help who use assistance are hard-working families, often with children that simply can’t make ends meet. A lot of folks in our community are just one tragedy away from needing assistance. That could mean one car accident, one major illness, one child or elderly family member who requires care, one job loss. Food pantries often only have shelf staple items, so we’re bringing in nutritious, fresh, organic fruits and vegetables.”

The newest initiatives at the Selma location include a beehive, and a Little Free Library that is focused on emergent and slightly older readers and is filled with mostly ecological literature. They also have a seed library, and now, the wildflower installation, as it struggles through the drought.

A few words for Activate Selma

From their very first visit to an Activate Selma meeting, Tiffany and her husband Darryl, could see people from every walk of life whose motto was “we don’t complain, we take action,” pretty much tracked with their own volunteers.

“I’ve seen Activate Selma grow tremendously since then. I’m so proud of everything that’s being done,” she says. “I know Smithfield had a very short-lived version of it, called Celebrate Smithfield. I went to two meetings, and it just wasn’t taking off. It doesn’t happen fast. People have to know that if you start something like this, they have to invest the time and just keep showing up.”

She offers her advice for the group:

1) Keep to the mission or goal, and

2) Encourage bonds that grow around common threads.

“I’m very proud of the volunteers we have in Plant a Row, because they have a heart for what we’re doing, and they’re a very, very, very diverse group of volunteers,” says Tiffany. “Our youngest this year is just turned 18, our eldest is in their 80s, and they come from every background imaginable. Every religious affiliation, and every circumstance that you can think of, different convictions, as far as politics or anything like that, but they all come together for one thing, which is feeding the community. I am so grateful for that.”

Upper row, from left, Roger Sadowski, David Lockett, and Rose Crickenberger. Lower row, from left, Chandrea Harvell, Kelly Phillips, and Jane Embler

“We found that people that maybe would never have spent time with one another got an opportunity to know one another just on a friendly basis, when everything else that may have been divisive was removed. They came together for a common cause, and they found very common threads within their lives,” she adds. “We’ve celebrated birthdays and graduations for children, and losses, unfortunately, of spouses. My stepfather passed last October, and my mother has been fighting cancer. We’ve all just formed a family.”

At the Friday session in the garden, expecting temperatures over 100, Tiffany tells her volunteers:

“Make sure that you sign in if you haven’t already. Please stay hydrated, please take breaks as need be. I’m going to keep a close eye on time and we’re going to try to get you out here at a reasonable time today. Okay. Off we go.”

Bryanna and her friends, Sarah and Bryan, listen from another row.

“Miss Tiffany, wherever she’s at, she is so nice, and she is so kind. Everyone’s going to like gardening. You can tell by the number of people that we have here, and it’s diverse. I was one of the only young people here. Now we have more. You just do what you want and things get done.”

At the break, there is cold water and red velvet cookies, baked by a little girl, Bree, and her mom.

Contact Tiffany for more about Harvesting Hope NC:
Phone - 919-819-3052
Email - [email protected] 
Website - www.harvestinghopenc.org

If you'd like to read more stories in this series, go to https://cindybrookshire.substack.com/