The Penacook Community Center is really putting the “community” in community garden this summer. The staff will be rolling out a new program for summer day campers, thanks in part to a grant from The Foundation for Healthy Communities, part of the Harvard Pilgrim Heath Care Foundation.
The grant will help fund the junior planters' organic community garden project. The program combines a healthy eating and living curriculum with everyday skills of tending to and maintaining a garden, part of a pilot curriculum provided by the UNH Cooperative Extension.
Here's how it will work: Each camper will get his or her own meter garden and have the opportunity to work on the larger garden plots, like the pumpkin patches and pizza garden. As the garden is harvested, kids will bring fresh fruits and vegetables home to their families. The harvest will also be shared with the children enrolled in child care at the center, senior program members and garden volunteers.
To get this program off of the ground, it took a lot of help from the local community and beyond. One pivotal detail, the land for the garden, was taken care of by the Penacook Historical Society – the group donated a 120-by-120-foot plot near the Rolfe Barn on Penacook Street. Seeds were started by the Merrimack Valley Garden Club in its greenhouse at the school, and master gardeners from the area have agreed to come in and help the kids manage the garden. Some neighboring residents have also volunteered to till the soil and prepare for planting. It's a volunteer free-for-all! Okay, not really, but there are a lot of helping hands at work.
The project will continue through the school year with the creation of the Junior Planters Club, a new after-school offering by the community center. The program will partner with the middle school's garden club to begin preparing for next year's crop. Middle school club members will mentor the elementary-school age children who participate in the after-school program.
If this all sounds like a lot of fun to you, we have good news – the community center is still looking for volunteers to work in the garden with campers one or two mornings a week.
Not into worms and weeding? That's okay, too. Donations of material or money are being accepted.
For more information on the program, to volunteer or to make a donation, call the center at 753-9700.
Wondering who some of the do-gooders are working on the garden project? Wonder no more, because we’re naming names: Beth Gustafson Wheeler (community coordinator for the Foundation for Healthy Communities), Julia Steed Mawson (UNH Cooperative Extension 4-H youth coordinator), Dorothy Perkins (UNH Cooperative Extension educational program coordinator and program coordinator of Merrimack County for the Master Gardener program), master gardeners Mary Ann Foster and Tom Danko and local gardeners Sandy Crane, Linda Day, Rick Jaques, Jennifer Habel, Maggie O’Keefe, Florence Danko, Joyce Miller and Mrs. Newton and her Gardening Club students. Kudos are also in order for the Penacook Historical Society, Carol Foss, Mary Estee (principal of Merrimack Valley Middle School), Merrimack County Savings for their sponsorship, Mailhot Enterprises and Steve Crane and Matt Nevers for the groundwork and the UNH Cooperative Extension for their 4-H youth development junior master gardener curriculum.
Thanks also to Deb Cuddahy, executive director of the Penacook Community Center, for keeping track of all those names and organizations, and for telling us about this cool program!
