Penetang Ecology Garden

In my last summer before I went back to college for the second time, I worked at the Town of Penetanguishene, on their Ecology Garden Project. Mostly, my job involved writing proposals for funding; we were far more successful than we counted on, and ended up with more than $90,000 to spend on a 5 month project!

That was almost as complicated as is would have been to not have enough funding - we were not allowed to carry funds over, and we had to not only use it all, but also be able to account for it all, of course.

The goal was to build a community garden. It would include demonstation beds, as well as plots that people could sign up for and use to grow whatever they wanted to. We also did a lot of environmentally focused work - composting, organic gardening, and so on.

Because we had so much funding, we were able to hire a lot of workers - we had the project leader and myself, a bunch of students (6, I think) - and a couple of people with special needs as well. It was a very good thing that there were a lot of potato bugs to pick off by hand, and a lot of purple loosestrife that needed clearing - that's what we did when we ran out of jobs in the garden itself - go find a patch and get to work. It would not do to have people just sitting around doing nothing; it looked bad.

The garden is also where my husband and went on our very first date almost 5 years ago.

Today, I had a client in the area, so I stopped by to see what's happening at the garden. It's no longer funded as an employment project or anything, unfortunately, so some things have changed. But it is still a beautiful spot - and for me, it is very cool to have been a part of building something that has lasted.

I am especially fond of the gazebos - I helped to build them, and was even up on the roof during the process.

That wooden fence goes all the way around the main part of the garden; it looks great, I think!

 The garden beds have lots in them, although they're no longer dedicated to particular types of plants, as far as  I can tell. We used to have one for herbs, as well as rock, butterfly, perrenial and - I don't remember the others - garden beds. That first picture above used to be called 'The Vandals' Garden' - it had a sign encouraging anyone that was there to ~take~ vegetables to take them from that bed, rather than from the community beds.

 We put these in at each end.

Someone that still works on the garden obviously likes sunflowers!

 These are all different types of berry bushes; I helped plant them. Looks like they're still doing well.

This pile of dirt is covering my pond! The NERVE!  I loved the pond!

They've filled it in - and moved my pumpkin patch dirt on top of it. No pumpkins this year, apparently.

The other thing that I was sad to see was that the raised community plots are gone. Perhaps they weren't getting enough use? Or maybe there just wasn't anyone to organize it, I don't know.

These pictures show the remnants of where the beds used to be.

I didn't see anything to indicate  who's taking care of it now; my guess would be the local horticultural society, as they're very active and talented in that area. And/or perhaps the Town. Even though there are changes, and its obvious that not as much is happening with it as when we were swamped with workers and money, it does look very well kept.

And I thoroughly enjoyed going back for a visit this morning.