How we helped Miss Henry with her new Garden from Haverford Farms

The Haverford Farm is a field site for the environmental studies program at Haverford College. As a Sustainability Ambassador with Lower Merion Township, I decided to see how my Butterfly project could be more impactful by volunteering with other local gardening groups.

Bartram's Garden partners with Haverford Farm by helping supply some of the "starter plants" that they cultivated from seeds. The Haverford Farm college environmental group then calls around Lower Merion township homes asking the residents if they would like a free garden with starter plants or if they would like to have pollinator in their backyard.

Miss Henry is an elderly woman who said that she cannot tend to her garden anymore, but she often enjoys eating the crop. She said she used to have a beautiful garden, but is not physically able to weed/tend to it anymore. Haverford Farms was able to set up the appointment with Miss Henry and a group of volunteers and college students went to Miss Henry's house and weeded her garden, prepped her soil, planted the starter plants from Bartram's Garden, and took the weeds/old vegetables for compost.

Below is the before garden full of weeds and old mustard plants and after is the garden with lettuce, arugula, collard greens, broccoli, spring onion, yellow onion, basil, and rosemary! We will continuously come to Miss Henry's home to help weed out the garden, water her garden, and gather the crops for her!

I am also starting a new project with Haverford College Farms where I am donating milkweed seeds and making pollinator seed balls. Through the Haverford college Farms network, I will be able to triple my impact by helping make small scale butterfly farms!

These Pollinator seed balls are quite easy to make! Below is a picture of what the finished product looks like!

Ingredients

5 parts clay soil

1 part flower seeds

1 part compost

A small amount of water to hold the balls together

Instructions

Mix clay, compost and flower seeds together in a large container.

Add a small amount of water-just enough to hold the balls together.

The balls should not be sticky; the consistency should be similar to cookie dough. Using your hands, make 1-2 inch balls and let them dry.