A Miles City brewery is holding a fundraiser this summer, hoping to raise money for local gardens.
The fundraiser — called Brews For Blooms — is being held by Otium Brewery and gives one dollar of every Drowning Mountains IPA pint sale this summer to a garden in the community.
"I mean if you live in concrete, it's just... it's not a great way to thrive," said Otium co-owner Hannah Strong of her motivation behind the fundraiser. "To me, the green space side of it is really important."
Strong said she first came up with the idea when thinking about a monthly theme for the brewery.
"So, every month, we do something called 'True, Good and Beautiful' and try to focus something on one of those categories," Strong said.
Those three themes can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Strong said for the "true" portion they'll host a lecture at the brewery and for the "beautiful," they'll feature a local artist.
But as for the good?
"How can we give back?" Strong said. "So, I was trying to find creative ways to do that."
That's when Strong came up with the idea to give a portion of pint sales for one of their Montana-brewed beers to local gardens in the community. She said they'll pick a garden each month of the summer and donate that amount to help with whatever the garden needs.
"I really wanted to use that connection of hop growing, essentially a really big garden, with the small, more public gardens in town," Strong explained.
July's garden is unique in its own right. It's at The Ruby, a coffee kiosk in town, that was formed to serve coffee and provide residents with a relaxing area outside.
"I looked around and I thought, obviously this place was just dirt before, and I was like, 'We need more flowers. We need color," said The Ruby owner Adrian Davis.
Since Davis began The Ruby, which was just before the COVID-19 pandemic, it's been transformed from an empty dirt field in the middle of town into a garden area that even features a playground set.
"It's a passion that I have and seeing it grow and bloom has been phenomenal to me," Davis said.
It's something Davis said she's proud of — although she knows it wouldn't have been possible without the help and support of the Miles City community — with Otium Brewery being the most recent example.
"It's not just me," Davis said. "This is Miles City, this is our community. Grateful doesn't contain how I feel about it, truly, because every little bit counts."
For Strong, it's one of the main reasons why she and her husband wanted to open a brewery in Miles City in the first place, hoping to bring the community closer together.
"We had seen so many breweries, especially in like Billings, and we just loved the environment," Strong said. "We wanted to have something like that in Miles City that created a community and hosted events."
