How a community garden is helping a Ukrainian woman restart her life in St. Louis

Tatiana is tending to her 2022 vegetable garden with care and contentment, just as she’s done for decades.

But this year’s garden is different.

The widowed 76-year-old, who is a retired engineer, mother, and grandmother, is cultivating a 4-by-8-foot plot at the Boyle-Laclede Community Garden, thousands of miles away from her home in Ukraine, where, each year, she enjoyed growing vegetables.

Tatiana, like millions of her fellow citizens, fled Ukraine after Russia began its attack in February. Many of her friends, Tatiana says, relocated within Europe. But Tatiana, whose last name St. Louis Magazine has withheld for safety reasons, already had a visa to travel to the U.S. She’s now making a new home for herself, living in St. Louis with her grandson, Sasha, an M.D., Ph.D., student at Washington University, about a block from the community garden. 

When Tatiana left Ukraine, she was in a group who first crossed into Poland. Polish volunteers greeted them, and provided them with food and other items. “We were all crying,” says Tatiana, who does not speak English and relies on Sasha to translate for her. The outpour of emotion was a response to the humanity shown to them. 

She then flew from Warsaw, Poland, to Chicago, where Sasha met her. She carried only one small bag as luggage because she was so uncertain of what the days and weeks would bring. Tatiana told her grandson, “I packed for a bomb shelter.” She’s since received more of her clothes from Ukraine. 

“My grandmother had visited the United States before, but not St. Louis,” says Sasha, whose parents remain in Ukraine. Sasha’s mother is Tatiana’s only child, and Sasha is her only grandchild.

The spring 2022 garden plot was a gift to Tatiana from friends of Sasha’s, who’d already planted a few vegetables. They’d heard through a circle of other St. Louis friends that Tatiana was an avid gardener.

Each day, barring inclement weather, Tatiana walks a block to and from the community garden to water and weed, if necessary, the tomatoes and cucumbers she planted, as well as the carrots, kale, peas, and herbs already there. The garden also feeds another of her hobbies: cooking. Both grandmother and grandson like to work together in the kitchen, preparing Ukrainian borscht and other dishes from their home country, as well as foods from other cultures. They enjoy garden-grown vegetables as fresh sides and incorporated into salads, soups, and other dishes. Tatiana also cans, preparing jars of pickled cucumbers and tomatoes.

Tatiana says that she welcomed the news that she’d still have a garden in St. Louis. “I am very grateful for the hospitality and welcome,” she says. “Working in a garden calms me and takes my mind off the world’s problems.”

But asked about the bravery she displayed in leaving her home country and traveling to the United States, not knowing English,” Tatiana is quick to answer.

“There were no other options,” she says.