Community Gardens

GROW BEAUTY

Community gardens are a wonderful place to get to know your neighbors and enjoy a healthier lifestyle at the same time. Many older individuals have spent hours in their gardens but now live in a condominium or home that doesn’t lend itself to gardening. Community gardens can satisfy the desire to get your hands in the soil. Many gardens provide plots of different sizes, so you don’t have to take on too much. They usually have a water source available. Often, there is someone around who enjoys trading tips for common problems, like pest control or what to do with too much zucchini. Trading your tomatoes for some gladiolas is fun, and friendships are usually forthcoming.

P.S. Participating in a community garden provides you with fresh produce and flowers, helps with the environment, gets you out of the house, and gives you something to share

Floral Arranging

NATURAL CREATING

If you are a gardener, you may already be skilled at floral arranging, but there’s always something new to learn. There are classes online, and local shops sometimes offer adult classes, especially during the holidays. Thanksgiving will be even more special when the centerpiece is your own design. A fresh winter bouquet featuring materials gleaned from snowy woods and delivered to a housebound friend brings the smell, color, and emotion of nature into their home. You can design for competition and enter your creations into local county fairs. Maybe you’ll win a blue ribbon! If your home décor is modern, “Ikebana,” the Japanese art of flower arranging, maybe something to investigate.

P.S. Treasure hunt at flea markets, estate sales, and local auctions when searching for unique and inexpensive vessels for your natural works of art.

Master Gardeners – Gardening Club at MVNRC

Master Gardeners

Gardeners Club

Mahoning Valley Nursing and Rehabilitation Center has a gardening club. The club works with Master Gardeners from Penn State Extension, which came today and assisted some of the residents in digging up the potatoes and sweet potatoes that were grown here in the facility.

They also brought in leaves and had the residents trace them with fall colors onto paper. Our Master Gardeners come in monthly sharing their love for gardening and expertise with our residents. This year tomatoes, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, cucumbers, and a variety of herbs were planted.

Every month their activity varies from making flower arrangements in vases, making crafts out of cords, pumpkin activities, planting seeds and taking care of gardens throughout the season. It nice to see our Garden Club growing since the Master Gardeners have been coming to the facility.

If you’d like to volunteer or learn more about Mahoning Valley Nursing and Rehabilitation Center feel free to call 570-386-5522 or drop by for a tour of our facility.