LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Police lights, shell casings and police tape — a scene that can be seen somewhere in Louisville almost every night.

Now, a group with roots in the Shawnee neighborhood is digging for solutions to an ongoing increase in violence across the city.

A piece of land near the corner of 41st and Market in west Louisville, a property is being restored from the ground up.

"My heart and my soul is here," said Velvet Welch. "There was a time when we grew together, shared together." 

The plot represents more than dirt.

West Louisville community garden 4-23-23

Velvet Welch, with the Sacred Earth Community Garden in Louisville's Shawnee neighborhood. (WDRB photo)

"When I think of Sacred Earth, I'm like, there is hope," said Welch.

For Welch, the land near her childhood home represents light in a time of darkness in Louisville.

"It instills a part of fear at the same time of me thinking like there's hopelessness," she said.

She's putting down soil and re-potting her roots in Shawnee, at the site of the future Sacred Earth Community Garden.

Sacred Earth will be the neighborhood's garden. The organization is a non-profit. Welch said there is enough funding to pay 20 teens between the ages of 15 and 18 to work this summer. She calls the stipend a reward for raising produce in a food desert.

"Come in, get your fair share, leave something for your neighbor," Welch said. 

She pictures the garden as a gathering spot and a place to talk about troubles that will hopefully end in hugs and handshakes, not police tape and bullet casings.

"I'm going to put back what has been stolen from us, and that's how to love your neighbors as you love yourself," she said. 

Working the earth and planting means a patient approach, hoping and waiting for solutions to violence to take root. 

"The same thing happens in life," said Welch. "You work through the situation. You go in and say 'I'm sorry. Forgive me. Let's think and be friends.'"

Anyone who may be interested in the program can contact Welch at sacredearthcg23@gmail.com.

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