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Workshop to help community gardens grow

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The New Hanover County Arboretum will host green thumbs and local food advocates for a Nov. 7 workshop on community gardens with educational sessions, hands-on demonstrations and networking opportunities.

Maria Hitt, workshop coordinator with the North Carolina Community Gardens Partners, said community gardens offer more than a source of local food or an opportunity for people to come together. She listed a variety of efforts, including therapeutic gardens at halfway houses, church gardens growing food for community members in need, and school gardens used to teach kids about healthy eating as examples of many different benefits community gardens can yield.

“There’s been a renaissance in growing. People want to grow their own food again,” Hitt said.

Amy Ballard, a FoodCorps service member using her community garden experience to help students at four New Hanover County elementary schools establish school gardens, said the experience of a community coming together to plant seeds, tend plants and share fruits together is incredible, but hard to explain.

“You can’t even describe that feeling in words,” Ballard said. “ There’s an underlying feeling, when you that whole spectrum filled out on your plate. It describes itself.”

Ballard and Elin Amundson, a FoodCorps service member in Brunswick County schools, both plan to attend the GROW workshop to learn how to share school gardens with parents and other community members.

“It’s a good way to get involved with your kid’s school,” Amundson said. “A lot of people support it, but not everyone gets involved. We’re trying to figure out how to get more people involved.”

Sessions during the Nov. 7 workshop will help participants at all stages of the community garden process, from how to successfully start a garden to keeping the community invested and the garden in bloom. The workshop will focus on the benefits of attracting bees and other pollinating insects to the garden and how to plant and tend gardens to yield year-round.

Participants will get hands-on experience with season extension techniques, like row covering and succession planting, and with native flowering plants attractive to bees by installing a pollinator-friendly garden at the Arboretum during the workshop.

The Wilmington workshop is one of five GROW workshops held around the state. Hitt said attendees at three earlier workshops in New Bern, Hickory and Laurinburg attracted more than 60 people from two dozen gardens in 19 counties. Hitt said survey responses suggest attendees found the experience valuable and planned to integrate new techniques into their gardens and continue to network with other community garden supporters they met during the workshop.

The workshop will take place Nov. 7 from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Lunch is included. The cost is $15 for North Carolina Community Garden Partners members and $18 for nonmembers, but scholarships are available. For more information, or to register, contact Hitt by calling 919-525-5946 or emailing [email protected]

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