The Healing Power of Gardening with Elin Mackinnon
Date: Saturday, March 14 from 9-11 a.m.
Location: Women’s Health Resource Library
Current research is proving that gardening is good for your mental as well as physical health. We will review how this works and the growing field of Horticultural Therapy. We will focus on working with children and how garden related activities have helped them with trauma, anxiety and other mental health issues. We will look at ways to get children excited about gardening and tips to ensure their success. We will review simple and inexpensive garden activities you can do with children and adults. This is a great workshop for teachers, child care workers, parents, grandparents or anyone who has children in their life
Starting Seeds with Janis Lesbines
Date: Saturday, April 11 from 9-11 a.m.
Location: Women’s Health Resource Library
From seeds to plants, this hands-on workshop will show you how to get your garden off to a good start. Learn how to sow a variety of seeds, and transplant seedlings. Learn what makes good soil—the foundation of a healthy garden.Learn about different containers for seeds and seedlings. You will go home with your own collection of seedlings to tend.
Garden Tools: Show-And-Tell with Janis Lesbines
Date: Saturday, April 25 from 9-11 a.m.
Location: IEM Market Garden located on the grounds of the Red Barn Motel
The right tool for the job can make all the difference. Learn about the variety of tools used in gardening, their uses, and how to care for them. Feel free to bring tools you want to show!
Starting A Garden From Scratch with Janis Lesbines
Date: Saturday, May 9 from 9-11 a.m.
Location: Women’s Health Resource Library
You’ll learn how to choose a site, do a soil test, dig out the sod, prepare the garden site and add amendments to the soil to grow healthy nutritious vegetables. Come dressed to garden! You’ll go home with a soil test kit for your own garden site.
Boost Your Garden Bounty with Cover Crops with Leonore Hildebrandt
Date: Saturday, June 6 from 9-11 a.m.
Location; Lenore’s garden in Harrington
Cover crops are plants like clover, oats, field peas and winter rye. They help fertilize the ground, keep weeds down, loosen clay soils, suppress diseases and attract beneficial insects. We will tour Leonore’s vegetable garden, look at a slide show with images from last summer’s garden, and discuss the benefits of different plants and growing methods. If you’re tired of hauling manure, try sustainable gardening with the help of the sun!
Click here for directions to Lenore’s home.
Mixing Beauty and Nutrition: Combining Vegetables and Perennials in Your Garden with Janis Lesbines
Date: Saturday, July 11 from 9-11 a.m.
Location: IEM Market Garden located on the grounds of the Red Barn Motel
It’s colorful, and just plain fun to grow vegetables and perennial flowers and herbs all in the same garden bed. Come find out what goes well together, and how to make your special garden successful.
Leonore Hildebrandt is a poet who teaches writing at the University of Maine. Living “off the grid” in Harrington, Leonore and her husband Robert Froese grow vegetables, herbs, berries, and apples.
Elin MacKinnon, LCSW was recently transplanted from her Orono home of 30 years to Steuben where she and her husband live more quietly now, off the grid. She has worked as a social worker with children and families in the Bangor/Orono area for over 25 years. In the academic year her time is often split between teaching social work classes at the University of Maine and a small private practice with children.
Janis Lesbines is a horticulturalist, garden consultant and small garden designer. She remembers growing radishes in her very first garden when she was five years old. Her passion is to teach others about gardening so that they can have as much fun in the dirt as she does.