When Sarah Faison set out to create a healing garden to forge community, promote beauty and soothe souls, she realized the person who needed healing the most was herself.
Along the way, she discovered what home really means.
The stars that lined up to draw Sarah to her family’s ancestral land in rural Lee County are mysterious and beautiful. She grew up near New York City and struggled with her decision to move to North Carolina. But now, it’s hard for her to imagine living anywhere else.
Sarah, who makes her home in Fayetteville, is the owner and proprietor of Ida Community Garden near Sanford.
She named the garden after her late mother, Ida James.
“I wanted to honor my mother’s life because if it had not been for her, I would not have had the land,” Faison said. “She was a woman who loved helping people, so a community garden in her memory is a perfect tribute.”
Situated along McDougald Road, Ida Community Garden is a cheerful oasis amid forests and farmland with its seating areas, strolling paths, swings and large pergola inviting visitors to drop by and sit a spell. Sarah’s husband, Fred Faison, is a skilled woodworker who built many of the structures. The most recent addition is a Little Free Library stocked full of books.
“My mission is to create something beautiful and peaceful, representing my love for gardening that I can pass along to others,” Sarah said. She has already held several events at Ida Community Garden, and is planning more as she continues to develop the space.
She’s aiming to teach classes on healthy eating, start an herb business and partner with area organizations, including local funeral homes, to deliver leftover flowers and plants to hospital and hospice patients.
Sarah’s grandparents, Sanker and Lucy Swann, grew up in Lee County around the turn of the 20th century and farmed. After they died, the farmland was divided among their nine children, who in turn passed it down to Sarah’s generation. Her sister held onto a portion for 30 years until she was ready to sell it, and Sarah claimed 1.25 acres.
Charles Swann is Sarah’s 95-year-old uncle and the last of Sanker and Lucy’s children. He was born on that land and still lives in his own home across the street from the garden. His daughter Charlene Cameron and niece Sally Boykin live just down the road.
On a cool spring day last March, Charlene drove Charles across the street to the garden to greet visitors. Family and friends gathered in a small cottage to reminisce about the past and dream of the future.
Charles told stories about his parents who made their living off the same plot that has become the community garden.
“We grew cotton, tobacco, corn, fruit trees and vegetables out here,” he said. He recalled chickens running free underneath four tall pecan trees. One of those trees is still standing and still bearing pecans.
“That tree must be 100 years old now,” Sarah said.
Sarah did not grow up on the family farm like her cousins. She was born and raised in metro New Jersey, earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Rutgers University and an MBA from St. Joseph’s University. She and her husband were entrepreneurs, and she held high-level positions in various companies, including Wakefern Food Corporation in eastern New Jersey.
“I was interested in the family land when it became available, but I still had my corporate job, and didn’t want to move down here,” she said.
The Covid-19 pandemic changed everything and by 2022, its impact on Sarah was intense.
“I lost 10 relatives,” she said. “I was in the grocery business, and lots of people working in our warehouse also lost their lives to the pandemic.”
She ultimately decided to retire and, with Fred, made her life-changing move to Fayetteville.
To say she suffered from culture shock is an understatement.
“I loved my corporate life in New Jersey, and I was happy,” she said. “We owned multiple businesses, and I knew that retiring and moving away meant I gave up my job titles and all the things that were part of my identity.”
The upheaval sent her into therapy.
“I would go to sessions sometimes twice a week to talk about my fears over shifting my life,” she said.
She started volunteering at Cape Fear Botanical Garden, and that became the best therapy of all. She began viewing her life through a new lens.
“I had always worked in an office, sometimes staying past 9 o’clock at night until Fred called me to come home,” she said. “At the botanical gardens, I discovered how great it was to spend time outside in nature.”
That experience convinced her that she just might enjoy country living after all.
She remembers the first time she set foot on her new property. It had not been tended for three decades and had grown into a small forest.
Her uncle Charles toured the property with her, and she remembers being afraid of everything from poison ivy to lizards, snakes and wild animals.
Clearing the trees and curating the garden helped her overcome those fears, and today she relishes the time she spends there.
One day, the Faisons were shopping at a local farm store and met Dennis and Vanessa Kidd, a young couple from Sanford with a passion for growing plants. They struck up a conversation and quickly became friends.
On their first visit to Ida Community Garden. Dennis and Vanessa were smitten and signed up as permanent volunteers.
“I don’t think they expected us to actually show up,” Vanessa said. “But we did show up, and now we’re never leaving.”
Sarah allocated a portion of the garden for Dennis to build a food forest, a multi-layered diverse garden system, designed to mimic the ecosystems and growing patterns found in nature. He tilled the soil and allowed lush clover to emerge and spread, creating a fertile ground cover. He has planted fruit trees, bushes and a variety of vegetables. He has also started a system of grape vines.
“It’s a beautiful thing to know that in a few years this food forest will provide an abundance of nectarines, plums, apples, peaches, tons of blueberries and other fruits and vegetables,” he said. “I’ve planted so much that this food forest is going to be an amazing sight to see.”
Even in mid-March, the plants were already sprouting buds with the promise of a beautiful spring and bountiful summer ahead.
Today, Sarah has traded her corporate suits for overalls and boots and is a master gardener. She even enrolled in the North Carolina Extension Farm School, a business planning program for new or transitioning farmers to help them get their farms off the ground.
NC Cooperative Extension Lee County Center Extension Agent Amanda Bratcher helped her along the way.
“I got to know Sarah because she sat by me at the Extension Master Gardener College in 2024, Amanda said. “We were chatting, and when she learned I was the horticulture agent for Lee County, she immediately wanted me to come visit her community garden.”
Amanda believes Sarah’s passion will lead to her success.
“Her love for the land, her family’s heritage and the memory of her mother is clearly very strong, and she has a will and eagerness to learn,” Amanda said.
For Fred, his wife’s dream has become his own, and he sees his role as helping her make that dream come true.
“I never thought I’d be part of a community garden where my love and passion for the land would be the same as someone else’s love and passion for the same land,” he said. “And when you are offered the chance to be a part of something so beautiful, you want to do everything you can to see it all the way through.”
Sarah’s cousins Charlene and Sally are amazed at their city-bred cousin’s transformation, and even after watching her work in the garden almost every day for the past three years, they still find it hard to believe.
“If she had grown up here, she would have been ripping and running and gardening all her life,” Sally said. “She never did any of that when she was young, and that’s what makes it so exciting for us to see.”
Charlene remembers Sarah’s summertime visits to Lee County and recalls her complaining and wondering how her country cousins could live there with the mosquitoes and gnats.
“She was always ready to go home as soon as she got here,” Charlene said. “It’s just amazing to me now that she wants to be outside in that garden all the time, even in the heat of summer.”
Sarah admits that while she loves the memories of watching her grandmother puttering around her flower garden, she never wanted to join her.
“I didn’t like going outside because of the bugs and the chickens that were always running loose and chasing me around,” she said, laughing at the memory.
Today, life in the country feels like home.
Ida Community Garden has become a gathering spot for friends and family members both near and far away. Sarah has discovered roots that run deep and learned that family is not just those you are born with but those whom you invite into your life — like Dennis and Vanessa whom the whole clan has embraced. When Vanessa gives birth to her first child in August, Sarah and Fred will welcome a new generation into their family.
Amanda says that the value in building a public garden lies in the sense of creating a sense of belonging.
“Gardens are places for gathering, learning, healing and growing,” she said, “and we are so much richer when we consider others outside ourselves who occupy our spaces.”
And that is exactly what Sarah discovered through Ida Community Garden. She knows her mother would be proud of her.
Read CityView Magazine’s “Home & Garden” May 2025 e-edition here.
