schervier nursing care center community garden

The Schervier Community Garden, designed around the health and well-being of CB8 neighbors, offers access to complementary exercise and education. During the spring and summer, older adult members have access to garden plots, tools, and training to grow their own organic food and flowers. The American Community Gardening Association recognizes that community gardening improves people’s quality of life by providing a catalyst for neighborhood and community development, stimulating social interaction, encouraging self-reliance, beautifying neighborhoods, producing nutritious food, reducing family food budgets, conserving resources and creating opportunities for recreation, exercise, therapy and education. By making the garden accessible, they are given the means to interact and interface with nature and other people in the community.

The garden is comprised of 25 parcels of land, where participants plant, maintain and harvest their parcels using organic methods. They also assist with maintaining shared common areas of the community garden. The Governance Committee, comprised of community garden members, makes itself available to assist the older members with their garden parcels. Transportation to the garden is provided weekly to members of the Marble Hill community. In addition to maintaining their garden sites, participants will also attend the weekly Garden Learning Series over the winter months to improve their gardening knowledge and skills. A variety of topics will be offered in response to the needs of the group.  Garden participants are expected to contribute a portion of their produce to Part of the Solution (POTS) community food bank. The produce will be packaged and distributed to POTS at least every other week. Plants will be used in programs such as cooking, planting, flower arranging, sensory programs and botanical crafts.