Community Gardening

​Laura reporting:

As TTJ and the combined Jericho-Underhill Food Hub tackle issues around local food access, it’s inspirational to see what’s happening in other Vermont towns. Jenevra Wetmore, executive director of Sustainable Woodstock since October of last year, presented a talk June 24 at the JCC on community gardens, Grow Your Own, and other programs in southern Vermont.

There are two community gardens in Woodstock; one at Billings Farm and the other, King Farm, supported by the Vermont Land Trust. The gardens are no till and organic. About thirty families and organizations use them, with participants paying a sliding scale fee and serving two volunteer days per year. These community gardens also provide hundreds of pounds of produce for the Woodstock Food Shelf.

Jenevra touched upon some of the many challenges they’ve faced, including erosion (caused by placement of beds too close to a brook), invasives, and jumping worms. There  is a part time garden coordinator; Jenevra stressed that most important quality of the coordinator is people skills rather than gardening knowledge.

Grow Your Own Garden program, started during Covid, supports people who couldn’t otherwise afford to garden, providing free kits of seedlings, seeds and beginning gardening book. Jenevra said that in the last four years, it has served 700 people in both Woodstock and surrounding towns.

Sustainable Woodstock is proud of their work at Riverside Mobile Home Park, a place that has contaminated soils and periodic flooding. They set up nineteen raised beds there this year, enabling residents to garden in spite of the odds.

Much talked about here, a community kitchen to process food and hold classes, etc. is now being organized in Woodstock; the local high school and Vermont Land Trust are combining forces to get it off the ground with Sustainable Woodstock offering their support.

Jenevra said people show up for big things, “community barn raising events” she called them. For example, Sustainable Woodstock hosts yearly Earth Day events; other activities include workshops (a Gardening for Nature series last year), online film series and monthly Green Drinks events. Weekly columns in the local paper keep people informed.

Organizers here have much to learn from the numerous activities of Sustainable Woodstock; for more details check out: www.sustainablewoodstock.org

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