N.S. town officially opens community garden

Community garden grows support Stewiacke, N.S., recently celebrated the grand opening of a beautiful community garden.

After hundreds of volunteer hours and thousands of dollars, the community garden in Stewiacke, N.S., is officially open.

“In early January our garden club was approached by the Town of Stewiacke to consider applying for a small grant program and have the focus be on active living,” said Beate Acker, president of the Stewiacke Garden Club. “How can we design something around that? We established that our community garden is a perfect fit and we ran with it.”

Acker said word of the garden spread quickly around town and soon people were pitching in to bring the project to life.

“As we reached out for supplies, everyone came onboard and we took our humble $2,000 and virtually doubled that in donations, and we put in a combined 1,500 hours of our committee to put this together,” she said.

Deputy Mayor Roseanne Chapman said the garden represents Stewiacke’s ability to accomplish big things as a group.

“This is an example of our community pulling together,” she said. “So many people have volunteered, so many friendships have been made.

“This is a symbol of our community working together and what we can do as a community.”

Acker said she feels a “resounding feeling of gratitude” about the garden and she hopes to use it to give back to the community.

“We reached out to the food bank,” she said. “We’ll deliver produce to them. It’s our hope to contribute as much as we can from what’s being grown here.”

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