Produce Donation Garden (PDG) & *NEW* Flavor Lab at the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center, Providence

Since 2011, the community garden in Roger Williams Park (RWP) has served as a community connector, serving local resident gardeners, the general public and volunteers. This year, an indoor greenhouse garden was added to the project scope. The RWP Botanical Center’s new Flavor Lab has been a success from the start. The concept for this garden was to have a year-round vegetable garden to extend the outdoor Produce Donation Garden’s growing season, a first for the URIMGP!

The Flavor Lab harvested over 230 pounds from the garden, with more coming.  The cold weather crops (lettuce, peas, carrots, etc.) did very well, while the summer crops (tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, leeks) did amazingly well with above average temperatures throughout the summer. The Flavor Lab was a highlight for school tours and RWP Botanical Center visitors. Students learned how their food is grown; many were provided with a sample of peas, carrots, lettuce or whatever was growing at the time of their visits.

The gardens added signage with images of seedlings and mature plants to help new volunteers distinguish plants from weeds. The PDG conducted eight formal workshops this year on topics including:

• Controlling pests
• Food Safety
• Utilizing all Parts of a Plant
• Urban Container Gardening
• Planning and Prepping a Garden

Information about sowing, thinning and harvesting was also available to workshop participants and garden visitors. Volunteers provided guidance to the Providence Elder Housing Project to improve and rehab their community gardens and provided an initial gardening library for the residents to use. As in 2017, Perspectives Corporation and their leaders worked alongside volunteers, who assisted four mentees and three trainers at three plots in the Community Garden. The mentees and trainers were taught how to plant and care for such plants as tomatoes, zucchini, strawberries, blueberries and sunflowers. Unfortunately, the groundhogs feasted on the cauliflower and cabbage!

Volunteers also continuously interacted with RWP Community Gardeners throughout the season, answering their technical questions as we have since 2011.

Recipients of produce donations were continually invited to the garden to learn more about the food they receive and how it is produced.  Volunteer leaders developed teams of two to four people who were on site seven days a week, which greatly improved communication on a day-to-day basis.  Eight URIMGP interns volunteered with us throughout the season. The PDG received an honorable mention as the Central Region’s Project of the Year for the second year in a row.

Display Gardens at the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center, Providence

The Roger Williams Park Botanical Center (RWPBC) is a facility governed by the Providence Parks & Recreation Department. It is open to the public six days a week; many opportunities exist to expand outreach to the public using the space. The RWPBC outdoor garden has a strong collection of New England native and other sustainable plants. In 2018, over 400 plants were labeled with their Latin and common names, country of origin and cultivar. No pesticides were used in the garden at any point during the year.

The RWPBC is a superb venue for public educational workshops, since the gardens offer the public ideas that they can implement in their home gardens. The RWPBC Display Garden project team held five Saturday workshops on topics including:

• Rose Pruning
• Insects in the Garden
• Flower Pressing
• Pruning Perennials
• All About Dahlias

Master Gardener volunteers interacted informally with visitors and shared their passion for the garden, their knowledge about best gardening practices, and information about the plants.  The volunteers also mentored 13 non-neurotypical young adults from Perspectives, teaching perennial pruning techniques, how to care for a garden and other gardening skills.

Many of the display garden volunteers worked as docents in the All About Plants Program, an interactive opportunity to share with elementary students the importance of plants in our lives.  We also worked with students from Wheeler School mulching the gardens, instructing the students on best practices for plant care, and providing a tour of the tropical plants in the greenhouses.  During the URIMGP Open House volunteers held a scavenger hunt of native New England plants and offered information on 16 natives.

Smith’s Castle, North Kingstown

Smith’s Castle was built in 1678, replacing an earlier structure. It is one of the oldest houses in RI and the original site of Roger Williams’ and, later, Richard Smith’s trading post.  Now a museum run by the Cocumscussoc Association, the URIMGP partners with the museum to care for and expand the historic gardens on the property. The URIMGP continues to participate in our host’s three festivals, including the popular Strawberry Fest, offering garden tours, kiosk materials and soil testing.  The URIMGP Smith’s Castle demonstration garden was also featured as part of the Project Open House in June 2018.

Smith Castle’s visitors are members of the public who come to tour the house, families who attend the three festivals, and many school groups. Garden education topics for the public continue to be the historical use of the various gardens and connecting that use to modern day practices and challenges.  The main garden is showcased as an example of biodiversity, as it is a combination of native and exotic plants and shrubs.

Volunteers developed a scavenger hunt for the public to emphasize the variety of plants included in the garden, and two games for youth visitors during the Project Open House to emphasize the importance of pollination.  Regarding soil conservation, handouts relating to Colonial and Native American gardening, stressing no-till gardening, dense planting and raised beds were developed, and a display booth showing techniques for dyeing yarn was developed as well.

House of Hope, Warwick

The URIMGP House of Hope team partners with the House of Hope Development Corporation at two of their locations: Shippen Ave. and Fair St., both in Warwick, where low income and former homeless clients are living.  Volunteers installed a perennial bed with many native plants around the perimeter of the veggie garden at Shippen. The food grown at the Shippen garden was chosen by the Fair St. residents and, when harvested, was given to them each week.  Some of the residents had not seen several types of the veggies planted at Shippen and did not know how to prepare them – it was a great opportunity to teach food preparation and cooking.

The residents at Fair St. were also taught how to dry and utilize herbs, when to harvest various vegetables, how some veggies like lettuce and scallions can be re-rooted, and how to fertilize and care for houseplants.  Volunteers learned how to build a wheelchair accessible raised bed, a new experience they can share with other gardeners.  Several of the residents planted the new bed and cared for the plants throughout the growing season.  Construction of raised beds for the 26’ x 20’ main garden was started and will be completed next year per specs approved by the Warwick Historical Society.