DUMMERSTON — Transition Dummerston hosts “How Do Our Gardens Grow?,” an educational tour of five Dummerston vegetable gardens and fruit orchards on Saturday, Aug. 24, from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The tour winds up with a Garden Tea in Dummerston Center featuring herb teas, scones, potluck desserts, and plenty of garden conversation from 3:30 to 5 p.m.
Admission to the tour and tea is by donation. A self-guiding brochure and map will be available at the “Share Our Surplus” (SOS) produce exchange kiosks in Dummerston Center, at the KOA campground, and in West Dummerston Village.
Gardeners at all levels of experience will enjoy these distinctly personal, practical, and productive gardens approaching their ebullient, sprawling, seasonal prime.
At the center of the tour is a 144-square-foot extended-season vegetable garden. As an event announcement states, if you think it's too late in the year, or in your life, to start a garden, this small scale plot says otherwise. It is a microcosm of the variety and volume of nourishment one patch of ground can sustain for body and soul. Here, and at each stop on the tour, resident gardeners demonstrate that gardening is a year-round pleasure.
Four gardens centered on Dummerston feature vegetable beds deep-dug in the French tradition: dry stone wall construction, practical deer fencing, a greenhouse, and interplanting fruit trees with small vegetable plots.
A fifth garden, 25 years in the making, is in a high clearing along the Dummerston/Putney line, and features large-scale plantings of orchard trees and vegetables. Finally a quilt-like trio of gardens - vegetable, orchard, and woodland reverie - are tucked into a meadow along a brook, and are a study in dense groupings of texture, color and varieties, as well as the gardener's other artistic pursuits.
Organizers say Share Our Surplus is one aspect of Transition Dummerston. The program encourages sharing the abundance of local gardens to meet local food needs, foster lively gardening conversation and informal garden mentoring, and build more awareness of our local food supply and food needs.
Transition Dummerston is part of the international Transition Town movement, committed to building local resilience for climate, energy and economic challenges.