Swannanoa is lucky to have several community gardens close by. If you’d like to try your hand at vegetable gardening – for your own kitchen or as a volunteer – opportunities abound!
Friends and Neighbors of Swannanoa (FANS) sponsors two community gardens. At the original FANS garden, located on Lanier Lane in Grovemont, area residents can rent garden plots of various sizes for a nominal fee. For more info, click here to visit the garden’s Facebook page.
This year, FANS started a second community garden on county-managed land on Clover Lane, off Lake Eden Road. The garden is currently in development, but is expected to be fully Warren Wilson Students Work in Community Garden operational by next spring. Plots will be available for rent, and some plots will be set aside to grow food for local food banks. Last Friday, a very industrious crew of volunteers from Warren Wilson College participated in a workday at the new garden. The garden was harvested, weeded, mowed, and several fall crops were planted. Some of the students built new beds for next year, while others pruned trees in the apple orchard. These same 16 students are in the Service-Learning First Year Seminar class that will be working in and with the garden throughout the semester. If you’re interested in learning more about the FANS gardens, or would like to rent a plot or be a garden volunteer, please call Sandy at 581-9020 or send an email to sandyjean51@gmail.com.
A third community garden, known as the “Home Grown Garden” is operated by volunteers at the Black Mountain Home for Children, also located off Lake Eden Road. The Home Grown Volunteers Work in the Home Grown Garden Garden was started in 2011 to provide fresh vegetables for children at the Black Mountain Home for Children, educate the kids and the community about gardening, and provide produce to local food banks and nonprofit organizations. Last year, the one-acre garden yielded 1,000 pounds of various organic vegetables, along with 2,000 pounds of sweet potatoes.
Volunteers are needed in the Home Grown Garden on Saturday mornings from 9:00 – 11:00 a.m., mid-March through September. To learn more about the garden, click here to visit them on Facebook. If you have questions about volunteering, please send an email to janelaping@sbcglobal.net.