Growing Opportunity: How Grand Subaru’s Share The Love Funds Are Helping The Learning Center's students Build An Accessible Garden Through A Bensenville Youth Coalition's Grant.

A garden can grow more than fruits and vegetables. At The Learning Center (TLC) in Bensenville, a garden improvement project is creating opportunities for students to learn new skills, care for their environment, and take pride in something they helped build.

The project was made possible through the Subaru Love Promise. Grand Subaru’s 2025 Subaru Share the Love® initiative hometown charity was The Bensenville Youth Coalition. Where Grand Subaru helped raise $70,532 to support local youth and our community through many efforts, grants, and scholarships.

Making the Garden More Accessible for Everyone

The grant form The Bensenville Youth Coalition is helping TLC improve its outdoor garden space, including the addition of wheelchair-accessible garden beds and improvements designed to make gardening more accessible to students who use wheelchairs. These changes help create a place where more students can participate in planting, tending, and harvesting alongside their classmates.

The accessible raised beds bring growing spaces within reach, making it easier for students to connect directly with the plants they care for. The goal is a welcoming garden where participation is not limited by mobility.

Learning by Planting, Growing, and Caring

For the students, the experience starts well before the first harvest. They have enjoyed helping assemble the garden beds and choosing their own plants, then learning how to plant, grow, water, and care for them over time.

Along the way, gardening becomes a hands-on lesson in responsibility, patience, teamwork, and the natural world. Each plant gives students something of their own to nurture and a chance to see how steady attention can turn small beginnings into meaningful results.

Fresh Food With a Community Purpose

The food grown in the garden is intended to supplement the lunch program in partnership with the Bensenville Community Public Library. That connection gives the project a purpose beyond the garden itself: students can see how the produce they grow can help contribute to meals in their community.

As the garden develops, the harvest will offer another way to connect learning, nutrition, and local collaboration.

Conserving Water, One Rain Barrel at a Time

Sustainability is also part of the plan. Rain barrels collect water from rainfall for use in watering the plants, helping reduce reliance on treated tap water when stored rainwater is available. The system gives students a practical example of how everyday choices can conserve resources and support a healthier environment.

What Sharing the Love Looks Like in Bensenville

The Bensenville Youth Coalition works to help young people reach their potential by strengthening their connections with the community. This garden project puts that mission into action: it creates a more inclusive learning space, encourages environmental stewardship, and connects students with a local food program.

At Grand Subaru, we are proud to support the Coalition and grateful to our customers, neighbors, and community partners who help make efforts like this possible. The true impact of Subaru Love Promise and Subaru's Share the Love initiative is not only in the dollars raised. It is in the opportunities those dollars create—and in the students who will grow alongside this garden.

Learn more about the Bensenville Youth Coalition at www.bensenvilleyc.org and Grand Subaru’s community partnerships at www.grandsubaru.com/partners-and-impact.htm.