Tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, herbs, celery, zucchini, carrots, beets, broccoli and so much more can be found at the Orwell Community Learning Garden. The garden is located between the Orwell Town Hall and Congregational Church. Each bed is meticulously cared for by Vermont Master Gardeners and used as a teaching tool for local children and adults.
We thank Orwell Village School for working with us to make this garden such a success.
Visit the library calendar to view learning garden work hours and join us!
6/13/2026 prepping the beds, seeing what survived the winter and what reseeded.
Welcome to the 3rd season of the Orwell Community Learning Garden! We had a nice turnout this Saturday, with an EMG intern. H, joining us for 2 hours. We also had a community member help us with some of the weeding and composting of the beds for a few hours, which was very welcome! The Orwell Village Store Committee had a festival on the Town Green during our work hours, so there was a food truck and excellent music by the Sap Tappers, which was an amazing background as we toiled in the already fierce heat. I’ll be glad for the slight cooling in the upcoming forecast.
As we surveyed the beds for the first time this summer, we noted some damage to the bed frame of Bed #1, numerous weeds, but also wonderful discoveries—a full bed of ripe strawberries (Fragaria spp.), garlic (Allium sativum) with full on scapes to harvest, some calendula (Calendula officinalis) that had reseeded and is almost ready to flower, and gorgeous native perennials with pollinators a-buzzing! Between the scapes, strawberries, and a mound of fresh dill (Athenum graveolens) that I took home to dry, we collected 3.75 pounds of produce on the first day of gardening. We sent the 1 ¾ lbs of strawberries over to the festival for townspeople to enjoy with the free ice cream, and sent the scapes home with some community members who stopped by the gardens as we were working. Once the dill is dried, I will package it up and bring it to the library to take home as an herb. A few other herbs also survived the winter, including chives (Allium schoenoprasum), lavender (Lavandula spp.), and some Tulsi basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum) had reseeded, as well. One interesting find was a huge parsnip (Pastinaca) that we had obviously missed during harvest (one that the bear did not get!), and it was very tall and flowering. This looks almost exactly like the dreaded, very invasive, and toxic poison parsnip (Pastinaca sativa), but this was just the garden variety parsnip that we eat. One should still be very careful handling the leaves, flowers, and sap of ANY parsnip plant, as even the edible varieties can be toxic to your skin, especially when combined with sunlight. I used a spade to dig it up by its root, and then carefully removed it by the base, not letting any leaves touch my skin.
We were able to fully weed five of the vegetable beds, and planted many of the veggie starts that were more than ready to go into the ground. These included: lettuce (Lactuca sativa), kale (Brassica oleracea), Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris), arugula (Eruca vesicaria subsp. sativa), spinach (Spinacia oleracea), red cabbage (B. oleracea var. capitata), cauliflower (B. oleracea var. botrytis), a mystery brassica, cherry and full size tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum), delicata and buttercup winter squash (both varieties of Cucurbita pepo), yellow squash, zucchini (also both varieties of C. pepo), watermelon (Citrullus lanatus), scallions (Allium fistulosum), curly parsley (Petroselinum crispum), Tulsi basil, chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile), rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus), fennel (Foeniculum vulgare), marigolds (Tagetes minuta), calendula, and a red, native columbine. We also planted cucumbers (Cucumis sativus) from seed around the tower.
Speaking of weeding—there was one weed that was a dominant presence in the beds called field pennycress (Thlaspi arvense). I fear that its seeds were present in either the compost or mulch from last year, as it was most prevalent in the new beds that we filled last year. Unfortunately, some of it was already going to seed again, so it is likely we will see another few “crops” or cycles of this tall, fast growing weed this summer, and possibly even next year, as some of it was placed in the compost bin with our mature, ready to use compost that was leftover from last year. We cleared as much of this out from the mature compost as possible, and moved it to one of the other bins that still needs breaking down. With our compost set up the way it is, it is unlikely to get “hot” enough to break down and kill the seeds as intended. However, we can see how long it does take to break down and become useable in the next few months.
The perennials are already stunning, especially the foxglove beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) with tall, stately white blooms that were attracting bees and swallowtail butterflies. The columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) are finishing their blooming, as well as the lupine (Lupinus spp.). The yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is just beginning to bloom, and the coreopsis, heliopsis, and echinacea are not far behind.
This was a jam-packed day of garden work, and it was very satisfying to see the “fruits” of our labors (haha, strawberries!) even on the first day in the garden beds this year. Next week we plan to get the rest of the plants in the ground, as well as some more seeds. We also hope to finish weeding the vegetable and perennial beds, see if there are any seeds to collect from the perennials already done flowering for the year, and possibly get started on mulching the beds. Sorry, there is not a recipe ready for this week, but I will plan on them for the weeks to come. The next gardening day is Saturday, June 20th at 10 am, and after that, we will be there every Thursday at 10 am throughout the summer.
Thanks for reading along, and happy gardening!
Karen DeMoy and Christina Shaw, UVM Extension Master Gardeners