As a young girl, Teresa Sirianni Amelio would sit on the back porch during warm summer evenings and watch her mother work in the garden of their Bellevue home. As darkness crept in, all she could see was her mother's white bandana weaving through the rows of plants.

Now 70, Mrs. Amelio also remembers her father and his love for the garden and his fig trees. Those memories inspired her to donate one of the family's garden plots to North Hills Community Outreach, a nonprofit agency that helps families in need in the northern suburbs.

Mrs. Amelio wants the 13,500-square-foot parcel off Kendall Avenue to be used as a garden to feed the needy.

"That's my dream," she said, "if they would take the produce and give it to the food pantry."

This isn't the first time the family has donated land for a community cause.

In 1994, part of the family's property was donated to Bellevue and is used as a baseball field for the Bellevue Avalon Baseball Association.

The field is named the Luigi Sirianni Family Memorial Field in honor of Mrs. Amelio's father. She would like this plot, which is adjacent to the baseball field, to honor her mother, Rosalinda Sirianni.

"That was my idea, to have a pairing of the land so when we're all gone, those lands will still be there and so will our name," Mrs. Amelio said.

Her parents emigrated from Italy and never used chemicals in their gardens. Keeping the land chemical free was one of the goals Mrs. Amelio had in mind when she donated the plot.

"My dad was organic. Being poor, I think my parents just grew it the way that they grew it in Italy," she said.

Her brothers worked hard to raise money to help the family buy additional land so they could grow more vegetables. They would eat what they harvested and sell some of the produce door to door in the neighborhood and to regular customers.

Sometimes dinner consisted of six or seven ears of corn because that's all there was to harvest.

"When you think of all those years that the family has worked that land, for us it was a lifeline. It was everything to us -- canning it, selling it and living off it," she said.

She admired her father's work ethic and found irony in the link between his day job and his gardening.

"My dad was a ditch digger for the West View Water Co.," she said. "He'd come home from work and go in the garden and dig."

Mrs. Amelio lives in McCandless now, just down the road from North Hills Community Outreach, where she volunteers. She approached the agency with the idea of using the parcel as a garden to feed the needy in 2002.

Fay Morgan, executive director of North Hills Community Outreach, worked to make it happen. She wants the 250 families that use the agency's food pantry at Allegheny General Hospital's Suburban Campus in Bellevue to have fresh produce to supplement canned and boxed items.

It took years to work out the details -- and the efforts of Avonworth High School senior Wade Cupcheck.

Wade, 18, of Kilbuck, offered to clear the land for his Eagle Scout service project.

In February of last year, he went to look at the property and realized he had his hands full. "It was all overgrown with large trees," he said.

Mr. Sirianni had stopped working the land more than 20 years ago. In addition to trees, weeds and brush, the remnants of Mr. Sirianni's cold frames made of brick, block and glass had to be removed.

Wade began what he said was the hardest part of the project -- the planning. Between basketball, Latin club, the student newspaper, football and his studies, he started to line up help for the project.

Many of the Scouts from Troop 321, where he's been a member since he was 11, signed up to help.

He measured the site, completed a blueprint of the garden and began work in June.

He recruited Bill Tyler, a family friend and landscape architect who owns a small earthmover. Wade also got help from the borough, which, among other tasks, turned all the trees into wood chips.

Wade and the troop also built a picnic table for the garden.

It took all summer to get the job done. Wade has a large, three-ring binder filled with detailed plans, pictures of the work and a log of everything that was done and how long it took.

Wade spent nearly 70 hours toiling at the garden, and the volunteers gave a total of 280 hours to clear the space, till the soil and mulch the area.

A neighbor drove by near the end of the work and said, "That's the cleanest I've seen that place look in 20 years."

While Wade was working, he spoke with an elderly man from across the street who told him stories about carrying buckets of dark earth to the garden.

He later learned that the man was Mrs. Amelio's 85-year-old brother, Vincent, who until recently lived at the family homestead.

Wade, who received his Eagle Award on Saturday, is relieved the project is over but glad that the garden has been resurrected.

"I wasn't sure what to expect," he said. "It was definitely tougher that I thought it would be. It was nice because it gives back to the community. Hopefully, it continues for a long time."

While visiting her brother, Mrs. Amelio watched the progress of the project and it brought back memories.

"I could just visualize tomatoes and plants growing again," she said with tears in her eyes. "For me, it's like my parents are still there. It's very emotional."

North Hills Community Outreach is looking for volunteers to help plant and tend the garden. The agency also needs donations of seeds, vegetable plants and garden tools. To help, go to www.nhco.org or call 412-487-6316.