Students Help Prepare CNC for Farm Day

Up with People students volunteered at the Chattahoochee Nature Center, Tuesday, March 12, to help get the Unity Garden into shape for the upcoming Farm Day event.

Volunteers assisted Garden Coordinator Libby Lintel in the Kaiser Permanente-sponsored garden to prepare the area for the second annual "Farm Day, a time when locals can bring their entire family to meet animals from the Art Barn and visit the alpacas from Craftdal Farms.

Farm Day visitors are encouraged to tour the Unity Garden, which is why the volunteers from Up with People were so essential in helping to tidy up the beds, complete spring planting and mulch the rows.

Fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs grown in the Unity Garden year round are used to stock the food pantry at North Fulton Community Charities with over ten tons of food donated last year. Volunteers, like the Up with People students, are an essential ingredient to the quarter acre garden's success.

Established with grants from Kaiser Permanente in 2010, CNC had three goals: production, donation and education.  

Currently, onions, beets, lettuce, sugar snap peas, leeks, scallions, Swiss chard, collards, kale, escarole, parsley, dill, cilantro, chervil, arugula and calendula are all growing in the garden. By using sustainable gardening practices as well as found and recycled resources, healthy plants are produced from healthy soil.