It’s late July in Vermont and we are harvesting garlic from our collective gardens! We planted the garlic into compost-rich soil back in October and have waited patiently over the past ten months for the garlic cloves to develop into bulbs.

We sort out the small bulbs for culinary use and save the large bulbs for our seed stock to replant again this fall.

Music and German Extra Hardy are tried and true varieties we love.

Since 2021, we have operated a mobile classroom, Veducation Van, bringing hands-on nutrition education to schools and community centers across Vermont. The majority of our funding came from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education grant administered by the Vermont Department of Health.

With recent cuts to federal healthcare, the program is ending on Sept 30th. See the link below for a consolidated list of resources developed for workshops over the years by our nutrition educator, Cedar Schiewetz. It includes some wonderful podcasts for deeper dives into eating healthy.

For more national and global updates on food policy and its impacts check out the Food Think Tank: Foodtank

VGN's Nutrition Resources

Thanks to the City of Burlington Conservation Legacy Fund, we are able to work with the Janet S. Munt Family Room for the 2nd growing season to manage their collective garden space at the Ethan Allen Homestead. Garden-based activities for Family Room participants with young children are offered every Tuesday and Thursday mornings during the summer months. In this photo, many little hands are harvesting one of our favorite, kid-friendly herbs: tulsi. Also known as "holy basil", tulsi is a calming and immune-boosting herb, with hints of clove and mint combining into a sweet flavor profile. Children harvested tulsi and filled large mason jars to make sun tea during morning activities in the garden last week.

This hands-on education is a pillar of our emphasis on food sovereignty and empowering New Americans and immigrant families to not only grow their own food but share their knowledge of gardening in our Vermont climate with friends and family.

Do you belong to a Collective Garden? Are you interested in starting one? Do you have gardening questions? Or just want to meet fellow gardeners? This is your community!

Join us Tuesday, Aug 5th 5:30-7pm at the Greenhouse at Landry Park for this free event!

In addition to talking about Collective Gardening best practices, we will be sharing our abundance of seeds for starting your fall garden.

Thanks to our partnership with the City of Burlington for funding this activity through the Conservation Legacy Fund.

Learn more & RSVP

Our vegetable and flower gardens are alive with pollinators. We thought you might enjoy the buzz of this story from Vermont Center for Ecostudies highlighting the 300+ species of native bees in Vermont and the role they serve alongside honeybees.

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