4-H Community Garden 2018

On Sunday September 16, 2018, the organizers of the Westmount 4-H Club Community Garden, Paulette and Wayne Macdonald, were on site for pictures with Bro. John Leonard and W. Bro. John M Reynolds. Bro. Leonard has once again spearheaded Nickel Lodge's plot in the community garden for the second year in a row. 2018 marks the third year for the community garden. Nickel started to participate in the garden last year as part of the 300 Years of Masonry celebration.

Last year's haul was almost exactly 100 pounds of vegetables that went to the Blue Door Soup Kitchen. As of Sunday the 16th, the garden plots have surpassed 220 pounds of food this year.

The 4-H club teaches kids to learn to do by doing. Once they were shown how to build a box, the kids got their hands dirty building the rest of the boxes themselves. This year, two more 4x8 boxes were built to finish the row bringing the total to 6.

The group that works the Westmount community garden, which is now in its third year, is generally from 9 to 21, but this group has a core set of workers many of which have been involved since they were 10. They have an intermediate to senior club with an age range of 12 to 21. Four members are in university or college, and their connection to this garden seems to keep bringing them back.

The garden has several corporate sponsors, of which Nickel Lodge is one. The funds go to building boxes, the purchase of seeds, and the gradual expansion of the facilities. A new shed and table high garden boxes are planned for next year. Such a setup may appeal to private gardeners.

Paulette explained a bit more about this year's gardens.

Just to bring a little more community into it, we invited Westmount Public School to come with their kids, and we sort of allotted them the last two boxes, but they came with so many plants. They actually planted three 4x8 boxes. The interesting thing was we had no idea what those plants would be though we could quickly identify some of them.

There was a little boy who planted one celery plant. It was tiny at only 1 inch tall and looked like it would never grow, but it did. He had no sooner planted it when he said, "Madame Paulette, can I eat that?"

I said, "You will be able to eventually."

He replied, "no, like now."

I said, "Honey, you just planted it."

A new initiative this year was the addition of Guerrilla gardening. The flower bed just outside the 4-H garden had several extra seeds sown, like zucchinis. That way, passers by who may have wondered about the fenced off garden could freely take vegetables that were planted in the more accessible flower bed.

And a picture of that evening's haul...