Part 2 - Shadowing Adrienne Continued
Our next stop was to a different sort of sight, a couple gardens at Chestnut Park Assisted Living, an assisted living center in Brighton. Chestnut Parks is a member of our Eldercare garden program where we set up a schedule where we visit and do activities with the seniors. The real goal here is to promote a sense of community within the living facilities while educating them at the same time (a win win if you ask me.) The farming here was a lot less intensive and served more as an activity than a method of producing as much crop as possible. Most of the seniors here watched as a couple of them helped us weed and harvest the kale and other greens. Many of the senior were very curious about the methods of farming and had questions about which crop was which and that sort of thing. When we were getting ready to plant some new crops, some preschoolers from the school across the street came and joined the activities. When they arrived you could see everyones faces outside just light up. Although managing a group of preschoolers is work all of its own, it was awesome to see how interested they were in all the steps of gardening; watering was by far their favorite.
One of the more interesting things I observed during the outing was how shocked everyone was when we harvested broccoli. Broccoli grows in a sort of strange fashion and not many people see it in its production stage, they just see it in the grocery store, or mixed in with their food at home. When we harvested and passed around the broccoli that grew in one of the gardens, everyone made legitimate gasping noises, as if they couldn’t believe this grew in their garden. Although I do admit growing broccoli is really cool, this small moment really opened my eyes and showed me how disconnected people are from the food they eat. Something as simple as growing one head of broccoli leaves a whole group of people amazed, yet I can bet that they’ve been eating it their whole lives. Generally, people don’t really realize that food needs to be intensively produced and it doesn’t just appear in the super market. Contrary to popular belief, there is no food fairy (even though that would be the coolest fairy ever.)
Having raised beds in this assisted living center is a great way to help people start to appreciate and realize where and how their food is produced. This is especially good for the young kids because educating them at a young age will undoubtedly help to promote a healthier and more green lifestyle. In my opinion, and especially seeing the complete shock and awe over the broccoli incident, programs like this are vital to start our country in the right direction towards many environmental and societal issues. Not to mention seeing kids get excited about planting and gardening is priceless
Our third and final trip of the day was to a residential site. Essentially the man had his own raised bed set up and his own soil/crops but he wanted consultation and advice on what 
to do. On our way to the site, we didn’t really know what to expect. In all, it was actually really cool for me because I got to see Adrienne really go in depth about every little thing this guy should do to his garden. It was awesome to get to learn with the client but it was also a good experience because I got to see how vastly different the horticultural team’s jobs can be. From a relaxed produce intensive garden at an office building, to a fun activity driven garden at an assisted living center, to a guy’s backyard just chatting and consulting about what his next steps in making his own garden should be.
The day was beneficial in so many ways. Not only did I get to seethe brawn behind the company instead of just reading about it on our website, I got to experience some eye opening events that taught me about our society as a whole and how our company really reaches out and helps fix these problems. As far as what I think my future with the company holds; I’m not really sure, but I’m really happy and honored to be part of such an awesome team.
