BACK PAGE BACKYARD Monadnock Grows Together

Monadnock Grows Together is a free local resource for gardeners and small-scale urban farmers looking for advice, information and support. They offer workshops, one-on-one technical assistance and a seed and tool library available to community members. Amanda J.C. Littleton, district manager of the Cheshire County Conservation District, took some time to talk with me about Monadnock Grows Together. Could you tell me about how Monadnock Grows Together started? It started in 2019 when the Cheshire County Conservation District and partners received a grant with the National Association of Conservation District. We partnered with Antioch University New England and their Community Garden Connections Program, as well as the Keene Public Library and NCAT, which is the National Center for Appropriate Technology. After partnering with those folks, we put in a proposal to see if we could expand education, technical and financial assistance to people in the region to expand urban agriculture and gardening opportunities but also with an eye for natural resources management. What kinds of goals did you put in place for this grant money? One of our goals was to offer education. We had a series of 10 different workshops. In these workshops, we offered one-on-one technical assistance to people who had questions. We had office hours at the library through Community Garden Connections. We also created an outdoor classroom space in Westmoreland at the County Farm in their CGC site, where they do a lot of gardening. And our third goal was to create the seed and tool library at the Keene Public Library, which is one of the feature items that we got established. Could you tell me about the Seed and Tool Lending Library? This library really just helps take away some of the barriers for folks who are interested in gardening. We worked with Keene Public Library to get them a seed library set up and got them different tools that they are able to rent out through their Makerspace. The good thing with the seed library is that it's available to everybody in the region, with or without a library card. Last time I checked, the library had 364 members in the seed library membership program. There are not only seeds for vegetables and fruits, but we also focused on having cover crop seeds to help people with building soil health and preventing erosion, as well as pollinator seeds that grow into plants that are good for pollinators. We also created a "How to Start a Seed Library" video for other libraries as well. We thought since we were all taking the time to go through these steps, we would create a resource for other towns to be able to use. Something NCAT often does is create resources and how-tos, so they helped create this video with CGC. What would you say the top barriers are that community members have come across with starting a garden? It really varies. For some people, it is money. It's expensive to start a new hobby like this, with having to purchase the seeds and tools. For others, it's just a lack of experience and know-how. We've found that having a group of peers, they can learn with, take workshops with and ask questions with has been really useful for people. Do you have any more workshops coming up? We are excited to announce that we just received a second grant from the National Association of Conservation District to continue to support this work. During the pandemic, there was a bit of a pause with public education, but now we just got word that we were selected for funding for this upcoming year — June 2022-2023 — to be able to continue to do more workshops and technical assistance and to get more resources out to the community. We don't have any events yet, but we are going to be working with partners to create a calendar of events that will be available. Is there anything else you'd like the community to know about Monadnock Grows Together? I would really invite readers to reach out to us and let us know what interests them for gardening workshops. We are just about to kick off our workshop series of 10 to 15 workshops this year. We would also welcome ideas for the tool library, too. We really want to hear what people need, and we would love to hear what folks' interests are so that whatever we plan meets the local community's needs. We're really excited to hear about what kinds of barriers exist so that we can help out and be able to offer more gardening opportunities. BOX For more information on Monadnock Grows Together or to share your input, you can visit www.cheshireconservation.org/monadnockgrowstogether or email info@cheshireconservation.org. For more information on the seed and tool lending library, contact Gail Zachariah at the Keene Public Library, 60 Winter St., Keene, 603-352-0157.