Progress report for CNE25-002
Project Information
Vermont Garden Network (VGN) has been teaching Vermonters how to grow food for over 20 years. Our success has been in our technique; utilizing hands-on demonstration education, working side-by-side with participants in a garden setting throughout an entire growing season. This model is designed to build community through interactive methods and collective conversations. In 2024, we shifted our priority to serving those with the greatest need to bring more increase food availability to our community. As new residents surge in Vermont, we are addressing the need to grow healthy vegetables that people can utilize (prepare and eat),
The program is a series of educational workshops ato teach new farmers how to be self-sufficient growing their own food. We believe in education that results in more than just a meal, rather a lifetime of growing food passed down through generations. The results will be assessed through a series of pre and post surveys asking if the participant will now be able to stretch their food dollars by growing their own nutritionally-dense vegetables and if they are able to share this knowledge with their families and neighbors.
Cooperators
Research
VGN proposes an 18-month project beginning in June of 2025 and ending in November of 2026. Although the first year of growing will be constrained by a mid-season start date we will use the pre-launch months for hiring and resource planning. Effectively, VGN will conduct two seasons of vegetable growing with new farmers in Chittenden County as follows:
- Offer hands-on education through workshop series on climate resilient gardening
- Topics: planting calendars, succession sowing, season extension, protected cultivation, integrated pest management, soil health
- Host monthly workshops at community gardens and community centers in Winooski, at no cost to participants
Results: gardeners acquire practical skills and knowledge for improving organic weather resilient agriculture (increase production, prevent pests, improve long term soil health, extend growing season)
- Develop multilingual educational material
- Video tutorials
- Posters/infographics on planting calendars, pest identification and management
Results: High quality resources, easily shareable for many years
- Manage collective garden in partnership with the Family Room
- Offer family-friendly gardening education activities over the summer
- Demonstrate best practices in small-scale organic gardening and production of meaningful crops
Results: increase children's exposure to garden-based learning and meaningful foods
- Support seed saving of culturally meaningful crops
- Workshop series focused on seed saving: pollination requirements, isolation distances, selecting for resilient traits, storage
- Seed saving resources: videos, handbook
- Access to greenhouse space for seed starting meaningful crops
Results: Establish a community seed library
New infrastructure:
VGN inaugurated the Greenhouse at Landry Park, in Winooski, Vermont, in March 2025. The greenhouse functions as a heated propagation house for seed starting, as a workshop location for hands-on learning, and as a space for building community around weather resilience and food availability. Greenhouse infrastructure improvements will allow us to increase our production plan, support gardeners by growing meaningful crops, extend our growing season through protected cultivation, and offer a monthly workshop series.
Proposal Timeline:
June-October 2025: Workshop series, season 1
June-October 2025: Family Room Collective Garden, season 1
Fall 2025: Community seed bank, season 1
Fall 2025 to summer 2026: Develop educational material (research, design, translation & interpretation, production)
March-June 2026: Seed starting meaningful crops in the Greenhouse at Landry Park
March-October 2026: Workshop series, season 2
April-October 2026: Family Room Collective Garden, season 2
Fall 2026: Community seed bank, season 2
Education & outreach activities and participation summary
Participation summary:
On-farm demonstrations and workshops/field days include the 20 weeks of hands-on garden based activities we facilitated at the Family Room Collective Garden. Educational activities included lessons on planting calendars, direct seeding techniques, pest management and identification, pruning and trellising tomatoes, mulching, watering, among many other topics. At least 50% of the collective garden planting plan included culturally meaningful crops, such as bitter melon, loofah, bottle gourd, and varieties of peppers, eggplant, and leafy greens traditionally grown.
People participating in learning at the Family Room Collective Garden include 80 individuals, ranging in age from infants to seniors, and at least 70% New Farmers.
Workshops in 2025 also included four topic-specific workshops we hosted in the Greenhouse at Landry Park, including: Succession Sowing for Continuous Harvests, Season Extension for Fall/Winter, and Garlic Planting.
Tours we facilitated include a a visit to the Greenhouse at Landry Park from Vermont Farm To Plate to learn about our food access work serving the New farmer community and a tour with Vermont Public featuring the Family Room Collective Garden and our innovative model of shared gardening around climate resiliency and growing culturally meaningful crops.
Upcoming Education and Outreach in 2026
1) Workshop Series in the Greenhouse at Landry Park: we are currently scheduling our monthly workshops from March through October. All activities will be free and open to the general public. Select workshops will be co-facilitated by an English-speaking VGN garden educator.
2) Education Material: we dedicated fall 2025 to gathering visual material, developing content, and researching videographer services. We will be producing five short videos in partnership with the Vermont Language Center. Additionally, in winter and spring 2026 we will be designing and printing infographics including planting calendars, pest identification guides, and crop guides focused on meaningful plants.
3) Manage Collective Garden in Partnership with the Family Room: our second season will include an expansion of the collective garden to include more space for growing bulk crops that are in high demand (e.g. garlic, onion, potatoes), trellised crops that require additional space (e.g. bitter melon, gourds), as well as many more meaningful crops (e.g. including vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers). Seeds for all these plants will be started in the Greenhouse at Landry Park.
Educational programming at the Family Room Collective Garden will run from April-October, on a weekly basis. We dedicate winter months to planning our garden-based learning curriculum, building relationships with families to hear what garden-specific topics they are interested in, and developing resources as needed.
4) Support Seed Saving of Culturally Meaningful Crops: in 2025 we laid the foundation for the Community Seed Bank in partnership with New Farms for New farmers. We developed an inventory of 33 varieties, including a majority of meaningful crops. In 2026 we will be producing a seed catalog with descriptions, running germination tests, continuing with variety trials, and growing out numerous varieties in the Greenhouse at Landry Park and at the Family Room Collective Garden.