FARMINGTON — The University of Maine Farmington community garden on South Street was open to the public Thursday, Oct. 13, to explain how the garden works, raise funds for its continuance and teach people about gardening.

Gretchen Legler and Misty Beck, faculty members at UMF taught Dig-It-Gardening for Social Change – an online English course in spring 2020 where students completed experiential projects at home on either ladder or patio gardens.

That year Legler was awarded a $6,300 grant from the Ella Lyman Cabot Trust in Boston. The money paid for some seeds, loam, and hemlock [to build raised beds]. The garden flourished from there. An open house for the public has been held every fall since.

The garden is not funded by UMF, is supported by grants and community funding, Legler noted. The garden is part of Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardening program. Legler hopes to get more master gardeners or people from the community involved.

“This is the culmination of everything we have grown,” UMF freshman Chris Houdeshell of Connecticut said. “We have a lot of activities, a chance to enjoy the gardens. There are planting demonstrations, plants to take home and pumpkin decorating as a fun fall activity.

“It’s a chance for the community to get to know the garden,” he added.

Several hundred pounds of produce have been harvested from the garden this year, Legler said. “We didn’t track it this year,” she noted. “Most has gone to students who have picked and eaten it or to St. [Joseph Parish] nutrition center.”

Legler continues to teach the gardening class and other classes have also used the garden. An anthropology course on food and culture “had a great time here,” Legler said. Nature education and environmental planning courses included sessions in the garden while biology students looked for pollinators and art students created sculptures there.

Students designed a special pollinator garden within the garden, Legler said. “It has something that is in bloom three seasons of the year,” she noted.

Annie Newman, a junior from Massachusetts had just planted a Jade bean seed. “I am really excited,” she said. “I hope it grows, period. My dorm doesn’t get a lot of light.”

Dave Fuller of Chesterville demonstrated how to grow garlic, which is planted in the fall. The former Cooperative Extension professional is a garlic expert.

“Garlic needs quite a bit of fertilizer,” he told Newman. Beds should be side dressed with nitrogen in the spring as the plant needs that nutrient to grow the bulb, he noted. “There is a direct correlation between the size of the bulb planted and the bulb grown,” he added.

At the seed planting station, freshman Emily Finch of Winthrop planted velvet queen sunflower seeds in a pot. “Water it when you get home,” she told the recipient.

The Dig It-Gardening for Change course explores issues of humans’ relationship with the natural world, Legler said. Students have visited farmers’ markets and Common Ground Fair “to get a sense of what the common food scene is,” she noted.

Houdeshell acknowledged that UMF inherited its campus at the expense of the Abenaki and other native peoples.

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