Community garden set to bloom at 'The Woods'

SANDPOINT — Plans are blooming to create a community garden at the base of the Pine Street Woods sled hill.

"It'll be so fun to see a year from now," volunteer De Trenbeath said. "This space as it gets transformed a little by little, it's going to come back to life. We'll have people in here and vegetables growing."

The garden, slightly overgrown, has been on the property for decades. Raspberry bushes, old fruit trees and scruffy tufts of grass fill the roughly 400-square-foot site. Plans are already underway to transform the space to a vibrant spot and community gathering space.

Volunteers helped build a fence around the garden and a planned pruning workshop is on tap to spruce up the garden's fruit trees. Plans are also in the works to transform the space and make sense of the raspberry bushes and other assorted plants already at home at the garden. There's also been some discussion about creating a physic garden — an herb garden dedicated to medicinal plants, a concept that gained popularity in the medieval era.

"The plan is to start small," said Michele Murphree of Gardens for Health Collaborative, which has helped organize community gardens at other locations, including the Bonner Community Food Bank.

The Pine Street garden is the 17th — give or take — that Murphree and fellow gardeners have brought to life in the community. And, the longtime garden advocate said, it's as much fun working on this project as the first.

"Any opportunity to help the land trust," she said. "They just do such amazing work … and with the vision they have, I have no doubt this is going to happen and there is going to be a lot of happy folks around this community."

The collaborative was created by residents with an interest in food and gardens who come together to help others, creating community gardens for those without the space, and hosting educational projects to teach those who may not know the ins and outs of gardens.

"A primary goal of the collaborative is to increase participation in and access to our community gardens," Murphree said previously. "Our outreach is guided by our vision to get fresh produce into the hands of our community, particularly individuals and families in need."

"De and I started talking probably a year ago about transforming this space into a community garden," Regan Plumb, Kaniksu Land Trust conservation director, said. "Then we kind of pulled Michele (Murphree) in."

It didn't take long for Murphree to connect the land trust with five raised garden beds in need of a new home. It took even less time for KLT to say yes — and only a few hours to move the beds to the new site, thanks to volunteers from the land trust, Gardens for Health Collaborative and Bonner Coil and Water Conservation, and a crew from Panhandle Special Needs, Inc.

"I think this is a great way to connect organizations in the community," volunteer Andy Kennaly said. "Nonprofits have to work together. I think it's building on our strengths together."

Collaboration is key to — and for — community, Plumb said.

"We just love to collaborate whenever we can because we can do so much more when we're working together with our partners," she said. "There's so many wonderful resources when it comes to gardening in the community. We're not gardening experts, so it's really been beautiful to bring in De and Michele and other partners to create a vision for this space."

Plumb and the dozen or so volunteers who showed up to move the garden beds said they can envision the future, see a place where community members can gather, grow produce and maybe learn how to boost their own garden at home.

"I would love to see a beautiful productive, functioning garden that brings all different people together to nurture it and to enjoy the produce and be learning from it," she added. "I see it as a space for bringing people together."

Like the others gathered late Monday morning to move the garden beds, Plumb said she is excited by what lies ahead for the soon-to-be community garden as Murphree stands nearby, beaming with joy and excitement.

"I'm just excited to see it come together," she added. "We don't know exactly what it's going to look like now but as a community, we're going to build it."