Join us throughout August and September as we feature Open Houses at community gardens across the state. These spaces nourish our families and neighbors, and also become outdoor classrooms, artistic displays, collaborative food donation projects and gathering spots to connect people within communities… all with stories and knowledge to share!
Open Houses are family friendly, free and open to all. Come visit us, meet some neighbors and be inspired.
Visit our map of sites to find a site near you or hit the road and tour all eight sites in August and September!
Morrisville Community Garden – Wednesday, August 4 between 5-7:30pm. In conjunction with the town’s weekly live music series, we’re opening our gates for tours of our garden at Oxbow Park.
6:00-6:45pm: Brian Norder, fellow gardener and semi-retired food processing consultant, will give tips on easy and non-intimidating ways to preserve your crop, including water bath and pressure canning, freezing, drying, quick pickling, fermentation and a few other tricks.
Garden at 485 Elm in Montpelier – Friday, August 13 between 5-7:30pm. Collective gardening – We’ll share resources, strategy and rules we use for organizing and keeping people engaged. We care deeply about food security – learn about growing food for others and gleaning for garden health and donations for any size garden.
Born in 2014 when Sheryl and Chris, who weren’t gardeners, offered some of their lawn to neighbors to grow food. Now about twenty households per season share the work, the harvest and donate hundreds of pounds of food to neighbors and the organizations that help ensure Central Vermonter have access to fresh local food. This garden is grown collectively. No one has their own plot. Instead, we all tend the entire garden and its small-scale community compost system.
Barton Giving Garden – Saturday, August 21 between 10am-12pm Join us for a Garden Celebration and Family Day! Live music, garden tours and activities, hands-on mini workshops (seed starting, shallot braiding), crafts (corn husk doll making) and stories, plus free garden tools and books.
The Barton Community Garden is a giving garden established to grow food for our community, bring people together to work and celebrate gardening, and to support gardeners with mentoring and information.
Ethan Allen Homestead in Burlington – Saturday, August 28 between 3-5pm
Join us for Harvest Walk – Six garden tours in one – plus free family activities, educational exhibits and demonstrations, and a kids’ scavenger hunt.
The Ethan Allen Homestead is the proud host of several community gardens that are managed by partners from several local non-profits and community organizations. During the growing season the Ethan Allen Homestead comes alive with gardeners and activities in the Winooski Valley Community Garden and Discovery Garden, Vermont Community Garden Network’s Teaching Garden, the Family Room Garden, New Farms for New Americans and the Indigenous Heritage Center’s Abenacki Garden.
Windsor Community Garden – Saturday, September 11 between 10am-1pm
Come see how we use remnants from industrial relics nearby; our trellis used to be the window frame in an old mill. Join us at 11am for a free workshop: How to Build a Backyard Composter.
Windsor’s Community Garden is celebrating its second year. We launched it in 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was shutting the state down. All but one of the gardeners bailed, so we ended up planting the bed ourselves. We were glad we did, as the Food Shelf’s lines were the longest we’d ever seen.
To reach us, look for the metal staircase behind the Mascoma Bank in the middle of town. Follow it down the hill, past the blooming perennials. We’re tucked inside a little courtyard with picnic tables and flower beds. This year, thanks to RiseVt.org and Mascoma Bank, we dumped out the old raised beds and replaced them with eight spanking new ones. Five can be worked without even bending down. The communal bed in the middle is where we tend all the fresh vegetables that go to the Food Shelf. Come see how we use fragments from industrial relics nearby; our trellis used to be the window frame in an old mill, and we share space with one of the town’s finest perennial gardens.
The Gardens at Green Acres in Barre – Wednesday, Sept 15 between 2-5pm
Everything Herbal— we’ll show you how to make teas, blends, honeys and vinegars using herbs you can grow in your gardens. Learn what herbs to grow in our area, which are the best choices for tea and blends, how to harvest, dry and store them. This will be a hands on class and participants will take home something yummy.
2-2:30 pm. garden tour
3:30-4pm. harvest, dry and storing herbs
4-5pm. making blends, teas, honeys and vinegars
Plus children from the summer camp will share and talk about what they made/learned about herbs.
The Gardens at Green Acres Apartments in Barre, are a joint effort between Barre Housing, Good Food Good Medicine program and the Residents of Green Acres Apartments. They also provide a place for the children of this community to attend the Gardens for Learning summer camp. If you would like to volunteer for spring and fall projects or have a special topic to share please email us @ gfgmprogram@gmail.com.
Green Street School, Brattleboro – Monday, September 20 between 4-6pm
Join us for a veggie cooking demonstration and take home a spice packet and recipes for making your own seasonings.
GSS pioneered the 1st of the Brattleboro School Gardens in 2006 and aspires to learn from Mother Nature to collaboratively have fun growing food & green space for us all to enjoy being healthier happier human beings.
With a heart centered ecologically minded approach, our Garden Program is focused on developing Diversity: Growing Native & Pollinator plants, perennials, annuals, edibles, fungi & flowers, aesthetics, Integrating gardening into the school culture & classroom curriculum & growing relationships within our local & global community. We have recently expanded and are growing more native shrubs and fruiting trees for the school and broader community.
Marshfield Community Garden – Sunday, September 26 between 1-2:30pm
All are welcome to attend the 1st annual Community Garden Open House and Gratitude Dedication Ceremony. Please join our community in celebrating the collaborative efforts to establish a space for growing and community building. While there you can learn to garble dried herbs to add to your winter tea cabinet. Also, you are welcome to decorate a flag that will hang around the garden for all to see: draw or write something with the theme ‘What does community mean to me?’. Bring a special stone or marble to place in the gardens with your blessing and bring your mug to try some delicious warming tea grown in the gardens. See you there!
Started in 2014 with family plots and space to grow extra veggies for the community to harvest for free. Expanded in 2020 to grow more food for the community, and teamed up with the Conservation Commission to plant more fruit and nut trees, berries and perennials all over the schoolhouse grounds. It is important that the wider community feels comfortable harvesting vegetables and fruit from the gardens, this is their space and whoever would like to be involved is more than welcome. We are creating as we go and welcome new ideas for gardens, workshops and community building.
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