May 1, 2025
The Sister St. Mark Garden Fund extends our care for Earth and for our dear neighbors by supporting garden projects that sow seeds of community and reduce food insecurity.
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden, PA, are excited to announce the awarding of 20 grants from the Sister St. Mark Garden Fund to 20 regional community garden partners for the 2025 growing season.
Our 2025 Sister St. Mark Garden Fund Grantees are:
- Aliquippa Green, Aliquippa
- B.F. Jones Library, Aliquippa
- Center for Coalfield Justice, Washington
- Community Partnerships, Inc., Butler
- Cooperative for Integral Ecology, Pittsburgh
- Fern Hollow Nature Center, Sewickley
- Firefly Gardens, Washington
- Friends of the Chippewa Branch Library, Chippewa
- Garfield Community Farm, Pittsburgh
- Hill District Consensus Group, Pittsburgh
- Mooncrest Neighborhood Programs, Moon Twp.
- New Brighton Public Library, New Brighton
- Point Park University, Pittsburgh
- Project Love Coalition, Pittsburgh
- Promote PT, Inc., Harrison City
- Rochester Area School District, Rochester
- Sharpsburg Market Garden, Sharpsburg
- Sisters of Saint Joseph Neighborhood Network, Erie
- The Pittsburgh Project, Pittsburgh
- Uncommon Grounds Cafe, Aliquippa
The funds will help our garden partners invest in tools, seeds, and fencing for community garden spaces that cultivate community and provide fresh, healthy food. Grantees are also supporting our dear neighbors through hands-on educational sessions for new gardeners, hosting seed swaps, transforming vacant lots into usable garden space, launching pollinator and native plant projects, and much more.
Since 2019, the Sister St. Mark Garden Fund has awarded 86 grants totaling $55,360. The grants are made possible through a portion of the proceeds from Faith. Field. Feast., our annual farm-to-table dinner that’s coming up on Sept. 20!
Named for Sister St. Mark Lesko, who oversaw the Motherhouse grounds in the 1940s and 50s when it was a working farm that supplied much of the Sisters’ food, the Sister St. Mark Garden Fund supports the Congregation’s goals of:
- Reducing food insecurity and providing healthy food choices for families and youth;
- Sustaining community gardens in local neighborhoods; and
- Building community through grassroots relationships and collaboration
Sister St. Mark Lesko, who was born on July 1, 1894, entered the Sisters of St. Joseph from St. John Parish in Johnstown, PA. She worked most of her religious life in the laundry of St. Joseph Hospital on Pittsburgh’s Southside.
When the doctors felt that Sister’s lungs were weakening from constant exposure to lint in the laundry, they advised her to change to an “open air” ministry. Sister St. Mark was then placed in charge of the farm at the Motherhouse.
Sister St. Mark was a gentle, quiet woman who spent her life in humble, untiring service. She died in 1960, just nine days after her 66th birthday.
