Year Four

The UMF Campus and Community Garden began its fruitful fourth year in the winter of 2023, starting seedlings in south facing windows indoors as well as outdoor winter sowing in recycled milk jugs.  Throughout the 2023 spring semester these seedlings thrived under the watchful eye and green thumb of UMF Education major Yarrow Fabian.

Throughout the year the garden produced a wide variety of produce, herbs, and flowers.  Amongst our flowering plants the bees and other pollinators kept busy with were lavender, russian sage, echinacea, coreopsis, and bee balm to name a few.  The garden was so flush with herbs it seemed that they were growing faster than we could harvest at times!  Some of our favorites this year were lemon balm, tulsi basil, thai basil, and chives (so many chives).  Of all the produce the garden grew this year our most plentiful crops came from our many varieties of tomato, our several varieties of peppers and potatoes, kale, and cucumber plants, many of which thrived in the heat of our wonderful greenhouse.  In total the garden produced ~172.11 pounds of fresh produce which made its way throughout the UMF and Farmington communities through St. Joseph’s food bank and the newly started Harvest Table, along with what was hand picked by students and gardeners to enjoy.  The Harvest Table was started in efforts to increase student accessibility and awareness of the garden.  A special thank you to this year’s dedicated gardeners, Yarrow Fabian, Education Major, class of 2024; George Mills, Psychology Major, class of 2024; and Sophie Therrien, Psychology Major, class of 2025; and thank you to Professor Gretchen Legler, the Director of the Garden, for supervising, organizing, and just for being a wonderful person. 

Many projects were undertaken in the garden this year, among them was the rebuilding of the raised table bed to allow it to carry more soil so that it will retain water better while continuing to be accessible to a variety of needs.  The garden team also worked closely with UMF Grants Coordinators to pursue outside funding for the garden.

The garden was bustling with activities all throughout the year.  In August we hosted a beautiful tea party serving fresh tea, biscuits, and cucumber sandwiches all made with ingredients from the garden.  We harvested and packaged seeds with Anthropology Prof. Gaelyn Aguilar’s Food and Culture class along with other activities throughout the fall semester.  We also held a seedling sale in June where we sold the seedlings that had started indoors over the winter and spring to fundraise for the garden, raising $400 for the garden and providing many local gardeners with high quality inexpensive ($1 each) tomato, pepper and eggplant seedlings.  The garden was the site of hands-on activities during the 2023 local Fiddlehead Festival.  The UMF Campus & Community Garden was host on May 16 to the Western Maine Gifted and Talented Conference, brought to campus by Elementary Education Professors Shannon Larsen and Meredith Swallow. These middle school students were exploring famous mathematicians, and at the conference they started to think about how they are mathematicians and how we use math everywhere, including in gardening!  The UMF Campus & Community Garden was proud to host the "Bugs & Slugs" workshop that was part of the In Bloom in Maine nature-based education conference on June 3. The workshop was led by Dr. Ellen Doris, director of the early childhood nature-based education program at Antioch University. Shout out to UMF faculty Dr. Patti Bailie for bringing the conference to UMF.  With so many fun activities going on there was always something new and exciting to focus on!  It truly was a wonderful year.

Yetunde's Garden! Earlier this spring garden assistant Sophie T. helped Yetunde Ajao, UMF's Assistant Director of Student Life Training and Multicultural Programming, start her very own tiny garden in one of the raised beds in the UMF Campus & Community Garden. We hope to make more such opportunities available to students and members of the campus community who live on or near campus over the summer and want space to GROW FOOD!!!

Check out our facebook page to see lots of beautiful pictures of the garden!

https://www.facebook.com/Dig.It.UMF/