MIDDLETOWN, R.I. \u2013 June 29, 2020 \u2013 Staff and volunteers at the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown were struggling to maintain the vegetable gardens next to the sanctuary\u2019s visitor center until Master Gardeners trained by the 溏心vlog免费B站 were invited to take it over in 2017. Today, the Good Gardens \u2013 as they are called \u2013 have been expanded, play an important educational role at the sanctuary\u2019s summer camps, and provide abundant produce to campers and clients at the Dr. Martin Luther King Community Center in Newport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Master Gardeners have completely transformed the garden,\u201d said sanctuary Executive Director Kaity Ryan. \u201cThey\u2019re an amazing resource to have overseeing this program during our busiest time of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The revitalization of the Good Gardens began when Newport<\/strong> resident Amanda Ward offered to redesign the gardens after becoming a Master Gardener.<\/p>\n \u201cWe took the old garden all the way down to the soil, then built it back up with raised beds, in-ground perennial beds, and a deer and rabbit fence,\u201d said Ward, who leads the four-person team of Master Gardeners that works the site two or three times each week. \u201cEnvironmental sustainability is part of our host\u2019s mission, so the garden is all organic.\u201d<\/p>\n A year later, the gardeners redesigned the hoop house \u2013 a modified greenhouse \u2013 to enable them to start plants earlier in the season and continue growing them into the winter. And this year they are testing hugelkultur, a German gardening practice that involves growing plants on a tall mound of decaying logs, branches and garden debris topped with soil.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s our new experiment for the year,\u201d Ward said. \u201cIt\u2019s a sustainable gardening method that supplies nutrients and retains moisture as the mound breaks down. Once we get it started, we shouldn\u2019t have to do much to keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n The main garden features 30 raised beds, two native plant beds and two herb beds, which together grow more than two dozen varieties of vegetables and herbs, from spinach and arugula to peas, carrots, soybeans, squash and bok choy.<\/p>\n \u201cWe try to plant a little of everything,\u201d Ward said. \u201cWe have a let\u2019s-try-it-and-see-what-happens attitude. If we get positive results, great. If it dies, we pull it out and put something else in.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s Ward\u2019s experimental attitude that keeps her gardening team \u2013 Ann Brouillette of Bristol<\/strong>, Janet Sells of Middletown<\/strong> and Karen Wright of Portsmouth<\/strong> \u2013 returning week after week.<\/p>\n \u201cI keep coming back because Amanda is fun,\u201d said Wright. \u201cThere\u2019s never just one way to do things and be successful, so it\u2019s fun to have the freedom to try new things. And it\u2019s been really successful. We raise a lot of produce, and that\u2019s very enriching.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year, the gardeners donated about 1,100 pounds of produce to the Martin Luther King Center, and despite getting a late start due to the pandemic, they hope to donate even more this year.<\/p>\n The Master Gardeners also designed a story-time corner into the garden to support educational programs for children. Participants in the sanctuary\u2019s summer camps, as well as children from the Martin Luther King Center, visit the garden regularly to read stories about vegetables and spend time planting or harvesting the vegetables they read about.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve done programs on edible flowers and pollinators and sensory lessons on how different herbs smell and feel,\u201d said Ward. \u201cThe kids even make organic pesticide out of garlic, onions, jalapenos, oil and water, and they spray it on the vegetable leaves to keep the aphids and other harmful insects away.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s next at the Good Gardens? The Master Gardeners hope to grow champion-sized giant pumpkins in their hugelkultur garden.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d love to do pumpkin paddle races,\u201d Ward said. \u201cCut out the insides of a giant pumpkin, and climb in and paddle them around a pond.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MIDDLETOWN, R.I. \u2013 June 29, 2020 \u2013 Staff and volunteers at the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown were struggling to maintain the vegetable gardens next to the sanctuary\u2019s visitor center until Master Gardeners trained by the 溏心vlog免费B站 were invited to take it over in 2017. Today, the Good Gardens \u2013 as they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-75608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-the-environment-and-life-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}