Watch the Vine Middle School Garden Club
Watch the Vine Middle School Garden Club plant seedlings on Wednesday, May 1, 2024.
The Green Thumb program aims to help participants cut back on their grocery bills and to foster social connection.Chloie Airoldi-Watters moved to Love Towers in 2002 and has been gardening there for years. For her, the practice is ‘like a meditation.’
Some residents of Guy B. Love Towers gave up their yards to move into the high-rise buildings in north Knoxville. But a program that started in the 1970s offers a space where they can garden together.
CAC Beardsley Community Farm, part of Knoxville-Knox County Community Action Committee, is a nonprofit that works to increase food security in Knoxville. Its programs include Green Thumb, which provides low-income individuals in Knoxville with a space to grow their own produce. That includes folks at Love Towers, operated by Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation.
The Green Thumb program has about 150 gardeners participating in it across Knoxville, said Beardsley Community Farm director Charlotte Rodina. The program’s goals are to cut back on residents’ grocery bills and to help foster social connection.
At Love Towers, the plots have been decorated with little items that give them their own unique character, and there are multiple styles of raised beds to ensure the garden can be used by folks of varying mobility levels.
For one resident, gardening is ‘like a meditation’
Chloie Airoldi-Watters moved to Love Towers in 2002 after having a garden nearly everywhere she’d lived previously. Because of Green Thumb, she’s kept the streak going, and it continues to be an important part of her daily life.
“It’s like a meditation,” Airoldi-Watters said. “I could just watch the butterflies … I hate gloves. I want to put my hands in the dirt and feel the dirt and get it under my fingers. It’s a moving meditation. … The having things to eat is a bonus.”
Lately, she’s been growing plants including rosemary, basil, tomatoes, fennel, eggplant, parsley, morning glory and catnip, which she says her cat Chiana enjoys.
The outdoors is important to Airoldi-Watters, and gardening gives her an opportunity to spend time in nature. “I can’t do things like hike and I never did kayak, I mean those kind of things,” she said, “But this is a very good outside thing to do.”
Hayden Dunbar is the storyteller reporter. Email: hayden.dunbar@knoxnews.com. Instagram: @knoxstoryteller.
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