Garlington Garden is Growing!

Our Garlington Garden is growing in every way possible!

Thanks to a generous grant from the Northwest Health Foundation’s Kaiser Permanente Community Fund, we’ve been able to stretch our imagination and see it become reality. Start reading here for our most recent update, and then keep on reading for a history of the entire project

Thanks to a donation from Dennis’ 7 Dees, we got to work with an incredibly talented landscape designer, Annie Bamberger, to come up with a design for our garden.

We’ve been inspired by the way Annie takes our brainstorming, adds her own creative ideas and then gets it all down on paper and into the ground. Now a crew from Dennis’ 7 Dees is working to transform what was unused green space into this plan that Annie helped us develop:

             

In addition, we’ve had the great privilege of working with Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc. They built two picnic tables with benches for us back in April that have provided a welcome spot for midday lunches and staff meetings. Last week their middle school camp built us a shed for all our supplies and some gardening resources. They broke it down to get it here and another Oregon Tradeswomen crew will come rebuild it with shelves. We can’t wait!

             

In the meantime, though, the vegetables we planted in May and June are thriving in the summer sun. In the spring we handed out bags of greens and lettuce to our patients. Through the summer we’ll be giving out zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas, and more, along with heart healthy, easy recipes to use at home with that week’s vegetables.

If you’d like to be a part of our project by donating some time in the garden, contact Suzy Jeffreys at (503) 946-6380.

Getting started

We’ve had two work days in April and things are really coming along!
             

History

Last year, together with our neighbors SMYRC and Cascadia Garlington Clinic, we began the process of turning 4,000 square feet of unused green space behind the Garlington Center into a place of food and healing for our community. In addition to six raised beds for seasonal vegetables, like lettuce and tomatoes, we had fruit trees from Friends of Trees, corn, pole beans, strawberries and rosemary and sage bushes. This year we have even bigger plans – putting in a water line, rebuilding the fence, adding a tool shed and compost center, picnic tables and cob benches, a bat house, more vegetables of course, grass for sitting and a covered rain-collecting gazebo!

We see this garden project as an opportunity to expand our services to the community by making it easier to incorporate the kind of healthy choices that can prevent or combat chronic disease. It’s one thing to recommend our patients “eat right and exercise,” but we all experience challenges in our lives which make these actions easier said than done! And we all know that fast and easy food can seem cheaper and more convenient than cooking from scratch. By sharing the garden harvest as part of a wellness program, we hope more of our community members will be able to incorporate fresh fruits and vegetables into their diets. As a bonus, there will be lots of opportunities for our patients to work in the garden, which is good exercise! Just as important as providing food and exercise, we’ll also focus on bringing people together through planning, decision-making, designing, planting and harvesting in order to bring the garden to life.

Keep watching our website to see our garden grow!