GROWING AS A COMMUNITY GROW! brings community gardening to Bonners Ferry
By Abigail Thorpe Photos Courtesy of GROW! and Jerry Pavia
IT'S A COOPERATIVE PROGRAM, AND OF COURSE THE PRODUCE IS AVAILABLE TO ANYONE WHO WANTS IT.
W
alk down the streets of Bonners Ferry or stop to shop at places like Yoder’s Market, and you may notice small planter boxes with a variety of veggies and herbs and little green and white signs sporting a watering can that say “Little Free Garden.”
additional gardens this season. Local businesses partner with GROW! to provide a home for the garden and their own container if they’d like (GROW! also has containers they can provide); there are funds to assist with the cost; and master gardeners help businesses to plant and care for the little garden.
Funded by a grant from the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation, High Five! and administered by the City of Bonners Ferry, with assistance from the University of Idaho Master Gardeners and GROW!, the program partners with local businesses to provide free produce to the community through Little Free Gardens outside of businesses and organizations throughout the town.
“It's a cooperative program, and of course the produce is available to anyone who wants it,” says Painter. “It's fun, and I think people realize how easy it is. How much, for example, lettuce you can grow.”
“I was thinking what else can we do to bring gardening to the public,” says GROW! Secretary and University of Idaho Extension Educator Kate Painter. “I thought what if we had little free community gardens like we have little free libraries.” It turned out there was already a national organization called Little Free Gardens, and so GROW! and Bonners Ferry joined, becoming the first site in Idaho to offer Little Free Gardens to the community. Painter, along with GROW! Treasurer Gerry Ann Howlett, spearhead the program. They started with 22 gardens the first year and are working to add
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GROW!, which stands for Gardens for Regional Organic Wellbeing, started in 2009 with a group of volunteers. It’s always been closely associated with the University of Idaho Extension office and the Master Gardening program, says Painter. The nonprofit provides gardening opportunities for those without access to garden space and also provides educational opportunities to learn from various master gardeners with plots in the garden and attend classes through the extension office. “It is a really wonderful thing to have this community garden as a gardening site for our program,” says Painter. In the early years of GROW!, there were three community garden locations. The garden now operates in just one location, on the grounds of Trinity Lutheran
