July 1, 2023
Grinnell is home again this year to nine giving gardens, gardens tended by volunteers from which anyone is welcome to take any produce ready for harvest. Those overseeing the gardens invite everyone to walk into the gardens and harvest ripe produce to consider volunteering to help keep the gardens weeded, watered and harvested. Ripe produce not harvested by visitors is often dropped off at MICA.
Two of the largest gardens, on Marvin Ave. and in Summer St. Park, are both already producing herbs and vegetables ready for visitors to harvest and take home to eat.
Imagine Grinnell board member Todd Armstrong is leading the group of eight to ten volunteers who are tending Marvin Garden, located on Marvin Ave. near Arbor Lake. A number of those volunteers work a regular weekly schedule, Armstrong says, some arranging to work at the same time with colleagues and other fitting work when they can into their weekly schedule. He adds that Marvin Garden can always use more volunteers. Those interested can contact Jennifer Cogley at 641-236-5518, extension 109, or jennifer@ahrensfamilyfoundation.org.
According to Armstrong, produce already available in Marvin Garden includes Swiss chard, bok choy, lettuce and snow peas with the wider range of summer produce on its way, including what promises to be a bountiful year for tomatoes. Coming laters will be a wide range of produce from green beans to eggplant to zucchini to a variety of herbs.
The garden also hosts two peach trees, pawpaw trees, currant bushes and hazelnut trees, all available for harvest as their produce ripens, and an apple and a pear tree probably too young to bear much fruit this year.
Armstrong comments that, during the 2022 season, volunteers rarely harvested produce because community members patronized the garden by arriving and picking ripe produce throughout the season. He views people picking their own produce as the best way for that produce to reach local tables and is working on signage which will alert those driving by which produce is currently ready for harvest.
New this year is a bean trellis, the Eagle Scout project of Gabe Reimer, and a water trailer contributed by Imagine Grinell and regularly filled by volunteers so plants can be watered when rain is scarce. Armstrong noted that compost from the Plate to Plant project being composted in the garden is available to the volunteer gardeners.
Armstrong terms the garden “a wonderful resource,” providing fresh produce for all and, he hopes, also a setting for educational programs helping people understand the different ways plants grow and how best to harvest. He is also considering holding events in the garden as various types of produce become available.
Rotarian Lowell Bunger is leading a group of five to eight Rotarians who are tending the giving garden in Summer St. Park for the fourth year. Bunger says the garden is now producing green onions, lettuce and radishes with zucchini just starting and “lots of blossoms” on green beans, peppers, and cucumbers, signaling they are coming close to ready.
Bunger, like Armstrong, says the best use of the produce is in the hands of visitors to the garden who harvest what they want. He urges fellow Grinnellians to become familiar with the Summer St. Park garden, noting the park’s parking lot is south of Third Ave. on Summer, from which visitors can walk up the hill to the garden.
The Summer St. garden also has a water source at the site, filled regularly by city staff on a mobile watering trailer. Rotarians have built a platform to house the water tank securely.
Armstrong and Bunger both comment that produce not harvested from the garden when ripe is picked by volunteers and taken to MICA.
Chad Nath leads the group of 12 staff members working at Ahrens Park who jointly tend the giving garden there. Nath says an abundance of herbs are ready to harvest and encourages people to watch the trees and bushes around the garden. An apple tree, he says, “looks plentiful” this year, and there are also plum, cherry, and pear tree and elderberry bushes, all surrounding the garden’s raised beds.
Valerie Steinbach of the Grinnell Community Early Learning Center says with a laugh that she is not sure she would call the garden maintained by staff and students of the center a “giving” garden since almost all its produce is immediately consumed when ripe by the youngsters who help in the garden, with any leftover produce harvested by parents dropping off or picking up kids.
Lamoyne Gaard, one of the half dozen members of the St.John’s Lutheran Church congregation who maintain the garden at the church, echoes the invitation from the other gardens to come and pick whatever is ripe. He says the radishes are about ready and also predicts a strong showing of tomatoes in July. Gaard makes a habit of harvesting on Sunday mornings so parishioners can take produce home after the service and adds that the garden annually donates 150-200 pounds of produce to MICA.
Holly Pettlon and other staff members of the Paul W. Ahrens Fitness Center are maintaining three raised beds in the healing garden at UnityPoint Health-Grinnell Regional Medical Center. Peppers and cherry tomatoes will be available when they ripen for those walking in the garden to pick and eat.
The other three gardens are at Bailey Park, Fairview and Davis Schools, tended by volunteers and the kids in the summer programs at Davis. Any ripe produce in any of those gardens can be harvested by any visitor, and the three gardens donate ripe produce not otherwise harvested to MICA.
The nine giving gardens are a partner program of the Claude W. Dolly Ahrens Foundation. The foundation receives donations of money and plants for the giving gardens and provides gardens with plants, seeds and other needed items such as shovels and gloves. Expenditure in the current year for giving gardens has been $300.
