How Lennox Island gardeners are promoting healthy eating and sustainability

Jeffery Bernard waters rows of broccoli in the backyard garden up coming to the Lennox Island greenhouse. 

The backyard was there lengthy right before the greenhouse venture was launched by the To start with Nation community in the winter of 2020.

Bernard has been doing the job on the back garden for about 3 a long time now — a position that teaches him a ton, not just about gardening but about many matters in existence, he stated.

“My time here in the past three years, I have recognized I’ve grown with the greens.”

Bernard and other gardeners have been bringing that discovering opportunity to other community customers. And so, the Lennox Island Greenhouse and Gardens has become more than just a location wherever people today can get fresh new produce at very affordable rates, but also a area for education and learning, he said.

Throughout the faculty yr, students from John J. Sark Memorial Faculty frequented the greenhouse and were being taught to do matters like weeding and planting seeds of cucumbers, carrots and beans.

They also discovered the importance of feeding on fresh new balanced food stuff.

“A lot of them considered that [food] grew on cabinets in Walmart, in which now they realize that a ton of function goes into the foods that they purchase,” Bernard explained.

‘A large amount much more men and women that want to try to eat healthy’

Supervisor Mark Ellands also hopes the facility can stimulate the community to eat additional fresh new and regionally developed create alternatively than mass-manufactured items, he explained.

And he is happy to see there has been an raising demand from customers for the create developed at the greenhouse due to the fact its to start with period past summer months.

“Previous yr, meals would sit on the shelf eternally. And now we uncover this yr, there is certainly a lot a lot more persons that are obtaining far more about it and a good deal extra persons that want to try to eat balanced.”

Ellands said he also hopes persons can discover much more about sustainable gardening when they visit Lennox Island Greenhouse and Gardens. 

While the greens grown at the facility are not qualified organic and natural, he and his staff test to use organic procedures, he said.

“To me, it can be incredibly unnatural to put pesticides, herbicides, all that type of stuff down. If you can mitigate it or reduce it altogether, I indicate, why not attempt? It really is a small little bit extra exertion, but it is so fulfilling.”

For illustration, the crew of gardeners helps make garlic and peppermint sprays to offer with pests like cabbage moths.

“The cabbage moth, they can smell a brassica plant from miles absent. So when you spray garlic spray on it, or lavender or peppermint or anything like that, it absolutely variations the scent of the plant, and it makes it a ton more difficult for them to discover the plant.”

The crew also grows distinct forms of flowers, some to appeal to bugs already in the greenhouse and other folks to draw useful bugs that prey on these bugs, Ellands reported.

“We have marigolds in there, and marigolds catch the attention of aphids and spider mites. We have nasturtiums, which also draw in effective bugs like lacewings and ladybugs to aid management the aphid populace,” he claimed.

“So it is form of like building a very little ecosystem inside the ecosystem of the greenhouse.”

Conventional Medicinal Vegetation

Meanwhile, Jeffery Bernard has an additional eyesight for the facility: a place where by men and women can understand about standard medicines.

He’s organizing on rising sweetgrass in the following handful of weeks. The herb has now been planted in one of numerous greenhouses in Atlantic Canada that partner with the Lennox Island Greenhouse and Gardens.

“If they can do it there, I’m likely to consider and do it listed here.”

Bernard grabs the backyard hose and continues watering the vegetables — some thing he does twice a day through weekdays and on the weekend.

He finds it therapeutic, he reported.

“I fished for quite a few years. I was on the h2o for lots of decades and lots of elders I have talked to talked about finding again to the land and gardening becoming 1 of the best strategies to aid with strain, to assistance take care of PTSD or anything at all head-sensible,” Bernard claimed.

“I discover that for me, coming in here, it just provides me back again to character and I get strength from the land.”