Community Garden

Harvest Time!

Many people have been working diligently in the St. Mark Community Garden harvesting fresh produce to be donated to the Thurston County Food Bank. These recent pictures show just some of the bountiful results of the hard work and love put in to tending our community garden. Click on the images to enlarge.

Community Garden Reflections

“If you want a child’s mind to grow, you must first plant a seed.”   The following was written by our St. Mark Office Administrator, Vicki Labensky. This year, members of the Thurston County Food Bank School Gardens AmeriCorps asked the fifth graders at Mountain View Elementary School to reflect on their visits to our St.…

St. Mark Community Garden Happenings

St. Mark Community Garden Happenings The pictures accompanying this article are of last summer during harvest time.  As you can see, many volunteers work in the garden to make it a success!  Potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes are our largest crops but cabbage, squash, celery, broccoli, corn, and cucumbers are also grown and provide a wide…

Pumped Up for Pumpkins

On Thursday, October 6, students from five 1st grade classes (almost 100 children total) from Mountain View Elementary School visited our Community Garden to learn about pumpkins.  Once the learning was done, it was snack time.  Jenny Bona and Earla Ferry gave them each a little dish of Goldfish crackers, carrots, pepitas (which means little…

New Pollinator Garden Planted at St. Mark

Thanks to a Thrivent Grant received for our St. Mark Community Garden, we now have a new section called a “pollinator garden”. This garden was designed and planted with specific nectar and pollen producing plants that will attract certain insects known as “pollinators”. Both plants and seeds were planted, including milkweed plants for Monarch butterflies. This…

Potato Planting a Huge Success!

After 2 years of pandemic isolation, St. Mark Community Garden held its annual Potato Planting event.  1000  row-feet  of potatoes are grown each year for the Thurston County Food Bank.  Over thirty people, large and small showed up for some gardening, some visiting, some refreshments, and some joy.  Please enjoy the pictures from the predicted…

Summer of 2021 was a HOT ONE!

Gary D, our Chief Gardener, two garden interns and a handful of volunteers somehow managed to get 13,216 pounds of produce to the Thurston County Food Bank – in spite of a record breaking heat wave and drought conditions. For two years rabbits have ravaged the garden in early spring – in spite of our…