Hennebery Eddy’s guiding principles include enabling well-being, fostering delight, and revitalizing communities. Each year, the firm provides the opportunity for the team to spend paid time volunteering. This June, the Bozeman studio volunteered with HRDC’s Story Mill Learning Garden. The quarter-acre garden is nestled in Story Mill Park, just west of the Bridger View Neighborhood.
Story Mill Learning Garden is a unique community garden harvested by the public. All are welcome to walk through, sample, and harvest in small amounts. This free-and-open harvest policy is intended to help reduce the stigma around food insecurity while also providing an engaging space for seeing and learning different ways of tending to plants. Any surplus the garden produces goes to the local Gallatin Valley Food Bank.
The Learning Garden contains a range of growing environments including raised beds, a greenhouse, a permaculture food forest with native plants, and an Indigenous garden based on Buffalo Bird Woman’s gardening techniques. The Hennebery Eddy team worked with Garden Manager Cally Ward, who imparted her knowledge on which plants grow well together, how to prune tomatoes, Indigenous planting techniques and various native plant species. We learned that in our climate, tomatoes should be watered in the mornings to allow the soil plenty of time to dry out. We ended the day pulling Canadian Thistle, a noxious weed, from the permaculture food forest while picking some of the ripe Honey Berries for a sweet treat. As we worked, families and individuals meandered throughout the garden, learning and sampling as they made their way through the different zones.
By volunteering our time at the Story Mill Learning Garden, we not only helped keep the garden prospering, but we learned about land stewardship, our local flora and community, and strengthened our existing relationships with the Bridger View neighborhood, Story Mill Park, and HRDC.
The HRDC Story Mill Learning Garden is open to all from sunrise to sunset, matching the Story Mill Park hours.