While it’s only natural to want to give Shawn Duffy ’91 his flowers for his incredible service, he’s usually the one handing them out. For years, Duffy has been delivering not just fresh bouquets, but food and dignity to his central Ohio community.
Duffy and his wife, Catherine, founded and run The Garden for All to address rising food insecurity in central Ohio. Using strictly organic, sustainable methods, the nonprofit delivers harvests of fresh produce to local food pantries year-round. What started in 2020 as three 25-foot rows at a church next door to their home has grown into something neither of them could have imagined.
“That first year, we donated 750 pounds of produce to local food pantries because of the need,” Duffy said. “And it has literally grown since then.”
“Grown” is an understatement and the only way to describe it. Last year, The Garden for All harvested and donated 36,000 pounds of fresh organic produce, representing 156,000 servings and touching an estimated 31,000 people in central Ohio. This year, the goal is 50,000 pounds. The operation has expanded to a three-acre organic farm lease in Johnstown, Ohio, and distributes to 10 food pantry partners across Licking and Franklin counties. More than 300 volunteers showed up last year to help.
“It’s been overwhelming, the amount of support and the belief in the mission that people have,” Duffy said. “People have just come out of nowhere to volunteer their time, donations, corporate sponsors. It's wonderful.”
Produce is only part of the story. The Garden for All also delivers fresh flower bouquets to food pantries every Friday, and the response has been one of the most unexpected and rewarding parts of the whole operation.
While the farm’s primary focus is measured in pounds of produce, the Friday flower bouquets have become a meaningful addition. For Duffy, seeing the joy the bouquets bring captures the heart of their work — offering community members a sense of beauty and care that aligns with the Marianist spirit of honoring human dignity.
“We get more feedback from the pantries about how much their customers love picking up a fresh flower bouquet on Friday as part of their pantry visit,” Duffy said. “That was really special.”
His sense of purpose was certainly watered at UD, where he attended because his grandfather, a 1941 graduate, took him to visit campus. He majored in business administration with a focus on economics, earned a master’s degree in computer science from Ball State University; and spent more than 25 years as an IT consultant, making partner at Accenture and later building out a Great Lakes region for Amazon Web Services.
By the end of 2019, he and Catherine were ready for something different. They planned to take a year off, travel and figure out what came next. Then COVID-19 happened, and The Garden for All was born.
While Duffy expected the physical challenges of farming, the human connections that formed on the property caught him off guard. He watched as the garden naturally bridged generations.
“A young family became friends with an older volunteer,” he said. “One day I hadn’t seen the older volunteer in a while, and I asked the young mom, and she said, ‘Oh, she had a surgery, and we took food over to her this week.’ I was like … some really special things have happened here.”
UD’s Christian Service Award, which recognizes alumni who embody the Marianist call to serve others, could not be more fitting for Duffy. At UD, he volunteered in the Dayton community and got deeply involved in UD’s Christmas on Campus, carrying forward a tradition of service that he says was woven into everything about his time there.
“Service and giving back were an important part of what I did when I was there and what I learned,” he said. “And also, just growing up as part of the Catholic faith and church — that sense of service was always there.”
Today, Duffy serves as co-founder and chief grower at The Garden for All. He and Catherine take no compensation from the nonprofit, and the operation is supported by many generous donors as well as a 13-person staff. He is, by his own admission, just as busy as he ever was in consulting. The difference is how it feels.
“This is the most meaningful work I’ve ever done, for sure,” he said. “By far.”
His wife calls their expansion philosophy ‘moving the fence out’ — you just keep pushing the fence back on the property and taking on more land. The need, Duffy says, keeps growing too, especially as federal funding cuts continue to strain food pantries across the country. He encourages anyone who can to get involved in their communities.
“The need is so great,” he said. “And at this point in our world, it is just increasing more and more. It is wonderful and heart-filling work.”
The Garden for All’s motto says it simply: “Fighting Hunger and Growing Community.” By centering his work on these principles, Duffy directly reflects the spirit of the Christian Service Award. Decades after his time at UD, his commitment to serving others remains the driving force behind everything he cultivates.