New twist for a new war.

By Diane Hudson

 Sue Sturtevant, former director of the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT, with its 152 acres of gardens and grounds, wasn’t looking for gardening advice so much as someone who could help build her a quarantine garden on a smaller scale at her home in Portland. 

“I wanted a U-shaped, waist-high garden, and I thought Fresh Food Gardens would be the perfect fit.” Owner Roberto Rodriguez, a Portland City Councilor-At-Large, is also Co-Interim Director of Cultivating Community, a local non-profit that manages community gardens throughout the city, increasing plots in affordable housing locations and outreach to low-income gardeners. 

Fresh Food Gardens filled Sturtevant’s beds with rich soil and compost—a mixture of seaweed and shells—and then set up a series of maintenance visits.

    “Things grew like crazy,” Sturtevant says. “You cannot imagine the joy of bringing in fresh flowers once a week, or the satisfaction of looking out your kitchen window and seeing that spot of green and the colors of the flowers. It has calmed me in a way that I didn’t even know I needed.” 

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.