What a busy week it has been for Grow Appalachia at High Rocks! In the past week, we have had three exciting events helping the new and returning gardeners of Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
This past Saturday we had the opportunity to interact with the residents of the Pocahontas Center, a nursing home and rehabilitation center in Marlinton, West Virginia. While enjoying the conversation and company of the residents, we installed a 144 square foot garden, a smaller raised bed, as well as many container plants. This accessible garden contains a great diversity of food plants, as well as many flowers to improve the aesthetics and provide a place where the residents will want to spend their time. We hope that the new garden will provide some great fresh food for the residents as well as an enjoyable atmosphere.
The next day, with the help of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace , we hosted Paul Blundell, a speaker from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, to inform the community about the importance and skills needed to save seeds. The speaker nearly filled the house, and in a town of 260 people, that is quite an impressive feat. Following the talk, the speaker and community mingled in the basement of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace enjoying locally grown food. More importantly, the community brought seeds they had been saving to exchange with other members of the community. This is a promising step into sustainably reestablishing local and heirloom varieties of seeds in the area.
Our last big event of the week was our “Meet the Seedlings” day where we distributed plant starts to the Grow Appalachia participants. 
Our participants endured some intense thunderstorms to drive out to our hoop house to pick up their plants. All in all, I think it was a great success!
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