We are in our third year of backyard gardening here at Grow Morristown. Still, on a few basic levels, we are experiencing some firsts. This year marks our first being able to fully take advantage of the facilities at Central Services.

Our top resource distribution, including plants and seeds and timed with workshop three, was a big success. First, we held a volunteer event to divide and organize all our plants, seeds and amendments. Ut Extension, Hamblen County provided our color coordinated swag bags complete with kitchen gadgets, recipes. We topped them off with our garden goodies and ended up looking like a fairly tight ship!

We started out in ’20 with high expectations but with all the changes and precautions that came with the pandemic we were somewhat limited. Our little community feels as if it has a lot more momentum and I believe it is partly due to having full use of our facility. We can stretch out, meet face-to-face without weather dependencies and stage our events ahead of time. Our facilities along with the Wallace Room are among our greatest assets and here we are in year three finally enjoying it. It feels good, look at those smiles!

Our families that helped were amazing. They set me up so well that the following workshop ran perfectly despite all the extra moving parts of a major distribution. This could prove to be our most ambitious group yet and in the end we had only 12 plants left over. All were hot peppers of course. In a word, it was fun. We’re having fun.

~Jason, Garden Manager, Grow Morristown

P.S. Eighteen – at least eighteen flats fit in a 4-Runner.