Virginia Cooperative Extension helps make gardening accessible

Published Saturday, August 14, 2021, 10:00 a.m.

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Debby Freeman knows firsthand the impact gardening can have on people’s lives.

As an activity leader at a long-term care facility, Freeman saw residents light up every time plants passed and witnessed a human-plant bond that encompasses age and ability.

“Putting your hands in the ground has meaning and healing power. Gardening is more than just playing in the dirt, it’s more than a hobby, ”said Freeman, a Norfolk Extension Master Gardener volunteer and registered horticultural therapist.

This summer, with Virginia gardeners busy growing house vegetables, maintaining community gardens, and tending house plants, Virginia Cooperative Extension is working to ensure that all Virginians can enjoy the benefits of gardening.

Gaylynn Callahan, an extension agent in the city of Hampton, helped develop the Hampton Urban Garden program, which gives city residents access to an urban garden bed and basic gardening education. By working with the local food and nutrition program, participants also learn how to convert their crops into nutritious meals.

Callahan and local Extension Master Gardener volunteers are using community centers and local libraries to bring programs to areas identified by local government as needing an infusion of programs.

“When I was growing up, things like that weren’t available to me,” Callahan said. “Gardening teaches you a skill, gives you confidence and teaches responsibility, which is especially important for children. We’ve had people who shied away from gardening because they felt like they’d always killed plants. When you get your first harvest it gives you a boost in confidence. “

“Everyone should have access to gardening,” she said. “It just doesn’t have to look like a traditional garden.”

For the quarter of Americans who grow vegetables, berries, or fruit trees at home, gardening is a source of fresh produce, but gardening has other benefits as well. According to the National Consumer Horticultural Initiative, plants have a positive impact on physical, social, and mental health, and through horticultural therapy, gardening can help people with conditions such as PTSD, addiction, and dementia. Community gardens, parks, and arboreta provide vital green spaces for the community, allowing neighbors to connect and create a sense of place and community.

In Lee County, southwest Virginia, Extension Agent Amy Byington agrees that access to gardening is important to the well-being of many people.

“Gardening gives people meaning,” she says. “We have people here who feel like gardening is the only thing they can do all year round. It gives people a sense of self-worth. For people with physical disabilities, something like gardening means a lot. “

Byington teaches a flexible and inexpensive way of raised bed gardening that uses plastic children’s pools that can be lifted on pallets for people who cannot stoop.

“You can get a kiddie pool for $ 5 and just put it on pallets instead of building an expensive wooden bed out of the ground,” said Byington. “We also teach other types of alternative gardening, like pallet gardening and sweet potato tower gardening. Gardening can be affordable. “

Byington and her team at Extension Master Gardeners also run the Lee County Garden Voucher program, which offers low-income residents vouchers for the purchase of gardening supplies and annual home gardening training courses. They also offer a seed library through the Lee County Extension Office where residents can borrow garden seeds.

“When you grow your own vegetables, you are helping to feed yourself, you are not relying on anyone else,” said Byington. “If you are on a low income and can give someone something when you have extra tomatoes to give to a neighbor, that makes sense.”

Gardening is also a way to tackle food insecurity and help people reconnect with nature, Callahan said.

“Food insecurity is an ongoing battle. During the pandemic, many people started seeing gardening as something to do when everything was closed. It started more conversations for extension with people asking, “Well, how do I do this? How can I grow this? ‘”Callahan said.

“Gardening is a way of giving people normalcy and a connection to nature. Especially for children in a city it is a chance to pause for a moment, to put your hands in the dirt, to learn responsibility and self-confidence and to know that you can grow your own food. You take that with you, ”Callahan said.

Freeman recalls a particularly important example of the lifelong impact of gardening. At a recent intergenerational gardening event, a 105-year-old community member had the opportunity to bake mud cakes filled with flower seeds. Although she hadn’t put her hands in the ground for a long time, she happily baked mud cakes with the children, who played enthusiastically with mud.

“In your life you become many things to different people,” Freeman said. “For many people, gardening is at the heart of their personality. It’s more than a hobby. Gardening connects plants with people, and there is a healing power in that. “

Would you like to learn more about gardening? Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners Can Help! Master Gardeners bring the resources of Virginia’s land grant universities – Virginia Tech and Virginia State University – to the people of the Commonwealth. Contact your local Master Gardeners through your Extension office or click here to learn more about Virginia Gardening and the Virginia Extension Master Gardener Program.

Devon Johnson story

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