Community garden helping community grow

NEWPORT – As the ribbon was cut and the gate swung open, the Newport Community Garden came to life. During the garden’s grand opening, held Wednesday, July 20, attendees helped bring life to the garden by planting some starts while enjoying refreshments, raffle prizes, sunshine and dirt.

“I have this therapist friend who once told me he wants all of his clients to either run or garden,” said Mandy Walters, director of the Pend Oreille County Library District. “I said, well, I can’t make anybody put on running shoes, but I can probably give them a place to put their hands in the dirt.”

The garden is not what people would traditionally think of as a community garden. Instead, it will be an educational space, located behind the Newport Library, for people to get outside and learn about gardening and enjoy the beauty of nature, even in the middle of town. As Walters noted during her talk at the grand opening, libraries are not just a place to check out books – they are a community builder, a safe space, and a learning hub.

“And this garden helps us be all of those things,” she said.

Bringing the garden to fruition has been a community effort, with a committee made up of members from the Library District, Friends of the Pend Oreille County Library District, the local WSU Extension and Master Gardeners, SNAP-Ed, and the Pend Oreille Conservation District.

The garden has been many years in the making, dating back to 2018 when the library went through a strategic planning process, Walters said. The goal of that process was to find out what the county was missing and try to plug some holes. She spent months talking to government agencies, library patrons and other community groups and ultimately came to the conclusion that a community garden was a priority. It gained momentum about two years ago, she said, when these other groups stepped in to help out and the committee was created.

Beverly Sarles, who works with Extension and the Master Gardeners, also serves as the local coalition coordinator for the Community Prevention and Wellness Initiative. In these roles, she said, there is overlap in working with families and youth to make the right choices, which starts with good nutrition, such as fresh vegetables.

“We are so happy we will have access to these things … This is just another way, hopefully, that we can establish some positive activities in our community,” Sarles said.

Sarles, as well as Kathie Schutte from the Friends of the Library, also noted that the garden was truly a community effort with all of these organizations working together, who also worked to secure funding for the project. Funding has been provided through grants from SNAP-Ed, the Innovia Foundation, Catholic Charities, and an Urban Agriculture Conservation Grant through the National Association of Conservation Districts. The Friends of the Library, who are volunteers, “swooped” in as well, Walters said, to raise a lot of the matching funds required for the grants. In addition, the Plant Man helped provide the plant starts and kept a donation jar by their register, and Apex Innovations came in on a moment’s notice – putting pause on another job – to build the fence when no other contractors have been available this year.

At the end of the speeches, Schutte noted that people have asked, “what do gardens have to do with literacy?”

“It’s all connected,” she said. “And maybe if people are here, enjoying the garden, maybe they will go in and find a book to read, too. So it’s a perfect coalition, and there is so much to learn in gardening.”

Mary Malone is the education and outreach specialist for the Pend Oreille Conservation District and Pend Oreille County Noxious Weed Board.