Plants, People, Purpose = Community Garden | Volunteer Gardener

The late season vegetable crops and the many flower beds are looking good at BELL Garden in Nashville TN. This unique hybrid school and community garden is on an acre of land at a public middle school. Its mission is to educate and to serve, and along the way it continues to build community.
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– It’s not just about the plants when you put in a garden,
it’s about the people that work there and also
the purpose of the garden. What is it for? Today we’re at BELL Garden and I have the privilege of
meeting with Deborah Stillwell, the Executive Director,
and Missy Hamilton, who is in charge of gardens
and programs for BELL Garden. Tell me about this wonderful place. It’s a hybrid, right? It’s not just a community garden. It’s that and students from
Bellevue Middle School. – Correct, so we are the largest and the only hybrid school
and community garden. And the hybrid came in after COVID, where we saw so many people that needed somewhere to go. And it’s also about sustainability. So where other gardens have
issues with getting volunteers or people to manage it,
we have both students and volunteers who are always here. And our purpose is
first of all to educate. Second, it is to serve. Deborah will talk about
our food donations. And then again, it’s all
about building community. – That’s great. So Deborah, how many pounds of food do you typically give away in a year? – Well, it depends. This year
it has been a difficult one. The weather, tomatoes, we lost all our zucchini to mosaic virus. Had to pull up 150 plants,
that was heartbreaking. – No – We looked to donate about 2,000 pounds, this year and we donate
to the Bellevue Food Bank. There is a food bank in Trevecca Towers where there’s a food
desert and also free store. So we have three places a
week we donate our produce. – That’s fantastic. So we are in the pollinator
section right here. Beautiful, flowers all
around. Tell us about them. – Well, our most prolific
flower here are zinnias. They’re super easy to grow, come in a lot of different colors and we succession planted them. So we’d have a lot of new blooms coming up when the others die back. We also have some gomphrena here, comes in lots of different colors and their great filler flowers. One of our other truly popular plants for pollinators are celosias These right here are some
smaller celosias here, but we have them throughout the garden. Another thing that they love is lambs ear. We have a bunch of perennial lambs ear. When they bloom these
beautiful purple flowers, they’re all over the place. The beauty of the lambs
ear is the perennial will come back for us every year. – [Rita] Not a native plant,
but the bees really love it. – [Deborah] Yeah, these we have to plant. – [Rita] Okay. And tell
us about the asters too. – [Deborah] Well, their perennials, they come up every year about this time. What we really love about them, first of all, the unusual color. There are not a lot of purple flowers and everything such as this. And they tend to bloom after
these start dying back. So something is beautiful
going on in the garden for the pollinators all the time. – [Rita] Great, and the
golden rod in the back. I especially love that. So that’s great. And it looks good with that
other aster back there. Which is a different species. And it just taller
different form altogether. So this is great. And why have a pollinator garden in a food community garden? – [Deborah] Well obviously
the pollinators pollinate. So we have more food in
everyone can do their job. But interestingly enough, this isn’t just a pollinator garden, it’s also our cutting garden. We had a lot of our supporters come in and wanted to cut some of our perennials and everything for flower bouquets. And we thought, okay,
we’ll just plant a few raised beds of flowers. And they were so popular, so
phenomenal that we put in, we have 12 beds here, mainly zinnias, but other things too that are cut flowers. So they bring income to the garden because we sell our cut flowers. And also they’re beautiful. And also they’re great for pollinators. So they’re very important to us. – And with the marketing
background, right? You came up with the idea of why aren’t we selling
these at the farmer’s market? – Well, interestingly enough, when I first came here, we weren’t even selling our produce. We were giving to one
food bank one day a week. And then the rest of the
week, I can’t even remember what was happening to our produce. So I set up a small
farm stand at our gate, and it was so popular that we have grown to farm stand Tuesdays
and Thursday afternoons, Saturday mornings, and on Thursdays we’re also at the Bellevue Farmer’s Market across the street. – [Rita] That’s so cool. This is the primarily food garden section and a lot of raised beds here. I think you said 52 maybe. – [Deborah] They’re everywhere. – [Rita] They’re everywhere. And they use a lot of
companion planting here. So tell me about that. – Absolutely, so one of the
main things, for example, is using marigolds and zinnias. Zinnias is to bring in the pollinators, marigolds because they’re stinky and rappel squash bugs, which are evil. And you know, calendula,
I know all the things. The other part that’s so important, we have the raised beds out here and we want to keep crops
going throughout the season. So we have chard, we have kale, we have more cold hardy plants out here. And then inside our high
tunnels we have the lettuces, the less cold hard. So the most important
thing is that we maintain organic gardening practices. – [Rita] Tell me about the irrigation too. – [Missy] Yes. So we love it. One of our volunteers named Evan, has done a remarkable job of creating throughout the entire garden
a DIY irrigation system. – [Deborah] And he’s been
here for years and years. – So people have different skills. And some people do the mulch in the garden and some people do other thing,
build things, whatever, so. Tell us about, do you
have any other plants? And I see the golden rod
over there, the zinnia here. You brought in from the pollinator garden. What else do you have
here? Do you have what? – [Missy] So this time of the year. – [Rita] What is this? – [Missy] These are jalapeno peppers. Of course they’re not cold hardy, so we’ll be seeing them
go bye-bye after a while. We have these amazing long beans. They’re long and purple, which makes it easier for
our volunteers to harvest. And then we have the end of
season our eggplants, tomatoes. And again, we do so
much companion planning that there’s a lot of basil and all kinds of things
throughout the garden. But again, it’s cool season. So you’ll have to come back
and visit us in May and June. – [Rita] We’ll do that.
Sounds like a great idea. Deborah, there are no less
than eight or nine bees on this celosia, it is gorgeous and huge and it’s all mixed in
throughout the food garden. But I also see a soldier beetle. Tell us about why you picked
this plant, what it does. – [Deborah] Well, interestingly enough, I picked it ’cause I really liked it. I thought it was interesting. And it’s my favorite plant now. It comes in all different
colors, all different varieties, spikes, fans, and it grows
prolifically as you can see. The seeds are come up on
these little areas here. And this big plant started from a seed about the size of a poppy seed. – [Rita] Oh my goodness. – So if you can imagine, there’s lots of different varieties. Some are short and compact,
some are super tall, some have super wide
stalks about this wide. And we just kind of planted
them assorted all around and got all this beautiful stuff. They’re very hearty and
they’re good for bouquets in, as you said, pollinators
with all these bees on them. – [Rita] Fantastic, I love the color pops in the food garden too. You still have okra, I
love the blooms on this It’s an African plant,
but grows so well here in our hot humid south. Tell us about this for fall. Do you get a lot of people wanting okra? I mean, what about that? – [Deborah] Oh absolutely,
it’s our number one crop behind tomatoes. And the great thing about okra is that it loves hot dry weather. And it will grow and grow and grow. We have to pick it every day. Last week I picked nine pounds in one cutting and it
will grow unto frost. – [Rita] Wow. Yeah, that’s incredible. So it’s more a fall
plant than it starts up in late summer, early fall. – [Missy] It starts in
late summer absolutely. It needs higher temperatures
to germinate and to grow. – Okay. So and you have a
red one there in your hand? – Yes, we have two different kinds. We have the green and we have the red. – What’s your favorite? – Well, I like these a lot
because they’re easier to see. It’s very hard when you’re harvesting because they blend in so well. And so you come in, you know, days later and you have something about this big. But as you can see down here,
we have that one tagged. We do save our seeds and
in that way, you know, we don’t have to purchase
seeds the following year. – Okay, great. Overall, how much food do you
give away from this garden? – This year we hope to
give away 2,000 pounds. Maybe even be more than that. We’ve just planted our cool season crops. We have a hoop house that we actually have
plants growing inside to try to lengthen our growing season, but it’ll be between 2,000, 2,500 pounds. – [Rita] Wow, that’s incredible. – Yep, yep. – All on an acre of school
property, so that’s incredible. And the students learn a
lot here too, right Missy? – Oh, absolutely, today
they’re gonna be coming in to do a bee count and actually, wait, we’re talking about with one okra pod, there are enough seeds to
feed more and more and more. – [Rita] That’s awesome. Do they get it? Do They
get the connection? – [Missy] Oh, absolutely. All of it. They love it, especially coming here and most of them, I’ve never
seen an okra plant before and they love it and we put them to work. – That’s incredible, so thank you so much for letting us come today. We really appreciate it. And it’s a wonderful place
doing such good work. You have people, you have
plants, you have purpose, you have all three, the
trifecta of gardening. So thank you. – [Deborah] Thank you
– [Missy] thank you.