photo by: Eudora Giving Garden

The Eudora Giving Garden is pictured at its current location at 545 W. 20th St. in Eudora. The community garden started out on a small plot of land on Eudora's Main Street and has since moved to an acre of donated land.

As part of United Way of Kaw Valley’s “Day of Giving” this week, Lawrence’s Roger Hill Volunteer Center is supporting a pair of community gardens in Douglas County — and interested volunteers will have opportunities in coming days to get their hands dirty for a good cause.

The center is facilitating volunteer work projects at the Eudora Giving Garden, 545 West 20th St. in Eudora, and Lawrence’s Little Prairie Community Garden, located in Peterson Park. The project in Eudora will take place Tuesday morning from 8:30 to 10:30, and the project in Lawrence is set for Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sign-ups and more details about both volunteer opportunities are available at volunteerdouglascounty.org.

Tasks on either day may involve planting, harvesting, weeding and mulching.

The Giving Garden is an independent nonprofit that started out as small-scale gardening plot for local business owners along Eudora’s Main Street back in 2018 before growing into a full-scale community garden. Little Prairie Community Garden, meanwhile, is one of the nearly dozen garden spaces located around the city as part of the Common Ground community gardening and urban agriculture program.

Last August, the United Way of Douglas County and the United Way of Greater Topeka merged to form the United Way of Kaw Valley. The resulting nonprofit organization now serves four counties: Shawnee, Jackson, Jefferson and Douglas.