Spotlight: Sheri Oliva

Sheri Oliva has been with the school garden from the start: from the first conceptual designs of the garden to regular garden maintenance today. Exactly who is this clearly motivated individual? Well to me she is more than just a master gardener. She is a mentor. A friend. A hero. It is with honor that I copy and paste a short interview I had over email a few days ago. Let's have a look:

1) Tell me "the basics." Where were you born/how long have you lived in Yarmouth/job/kids, etc...
I'm a Midwestern girl but I've lived in Maine almost half my life now, so I've come to like saltwater more than fresh- I even like how cold it is. We've lived in Yarmouth for 11 years. The Gillies were already living next door, and that arrangement has pretty much sealed the deal for our family. Leo (your partner in pretty much everything including this project) is 17, Henry and Joe are 11, and Frank is the patriarch/visionary. I've been an ESL teacher in Portland for many years.

2) When/how did you first decide to get involved with the garden?
Marie and Meg first told me about the idea while carpooling to one of our MG classes. Once I met Becki and Maryellen, I knew I had to get involved because I knew these 4 women had the knowledge/ horsepower, and willingness to reach out to the community to make it happen.

3) What interests you most about gardening in general?
change. beauty. good food. being local.

4) What do you think is working best at the garden right now?
EVERYTHING! It's growing like gangbusters right now!

5) What would you change about the garden?
I'd love to find a way to have someone there a good part of every day to just keep making it better maintenance-wise, but also to create a hub of activity so that lots of people would be there adding their ideas and energy to the project; making sure it has a strong future and a strong presence in the schools. I guess that means money.

And now some James Lipton-inspired questions...

6) What is your favorite word?
I like the word "fresh." I find it refreshing.

7) What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I like garden design a lot.

8) If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
"abandon hunger, ye who enter here"

And finally, you're on a desert island. What would you bring for a

9) Book?
Mindfulness in Plain English

10) Music album?
a Putamayo World music collection- Afro Cuban

11) Movie?
something funny like 'Mars Attacks'

And there you have it. Thanks for spending the time to answer these questions, Sheri!

What Can We Learn From Jamie Oliver?

Jamie Oliver, as my trusty friend Wikipedia puts it, is:

an English celebrity chef. He is well known for his role in campaigning against processed foods in British schools.

Having known Jamie Oliver since childhood through his fantastic bread recipes, I am a bit of a fan of the guy. But fandom shifted to utter respect when learning about a campaign that started five years ago to revolutionize school foods. His mission? To turn children, through education and nutrition, away from fats and salts and meats towards fresh, tasty vegetables and other
healthy options.

His manifesto and more right here.

The British School Food Trust also has some good ideas related to Jamie Oliver's vision.

I guess I bring this up simply to show that the Yarmouth School Garden is an opportunity for Yarmouth kids, like our groundbreaking and intelligent British forefathers, to taste truly delicious organic foods and expose themselves to the secret that is tastiness combined with healthiness. In the split-second moment in which we hear the word "vegetable," us humans have been primed to think of soggy asparagus. Why not shatter the dichotomy of delectable Doritos versus disgusting dill? With a few tricks, courtesy of Jamie Oliver, we could use fresh ingredients to create innovative school meals.

Garden Update: July 15

Okay well Leo and I have been working on some painting! "Painting? Painting upon what?" you ask. Well Garden Director Becki Schreiber bought some pretty cool, basic wooden benches for us to start our project.
More specifically, Leo is coordinating some kids from the recreational ("rec") camp at which he works to come down to the garden and paint these benches with flowery designs and what not. Before the kids do that though, Leo and I had to prime the benches with white paint, and then add a base color. I'm excited! Gotta admit it's going to be fun coordinating kids to some functional art. Painting does, indeed, happen to be a hobby of mine, so we'll see what happens.

Additionally, the bridge street duo are painting an introductory sign to be posted at the entrance of the garden. Leo's ma, Sheri, found this truly interesting sign at the dump...
Strange, one might say. I am a driving force to keep the angel flying at the top; for now, we've primed all but the wing-ed figure. Here's an idea: a speech bubble coming out of the angel's trumpet. How about "abandon all hunger ye who enter here"?

Considering that to be slightly lame, any other ideas are more than welcome.

Other Interesting Stuff

While we're on the topic of weapons of mass beautification, I must share that I stumbled upon some other pretty cool things. Ever heard of guerilla gardening? I hadn't, but I found this site, about a group of rogue gardeners that plant flowers in ugly but popular places. Funny. Inventive.


Check it out here.

And how about "seed bombing" - making clay/seed balls that can be placed in bland areas as to spread flowers and other good stuff.

Here it is at crunchgear.com

I also found out about a garden that has been up and running for a while now, up in Lewiston, Maine. Some dude made a pretty avant-garde youtube video about it. Although the soundtrack is lacking, you've got to love those cute kids:

Spotlight: Roger Doiron

Roger Doiron is a leading figure in propagating and inspiring others in the benefits of local, organic gardening. Earlier this year, as you may have seen on the timeline, Roger came to speak at the local Yarmouth auditorium. Although I was not able to make an appearance, apparently the event was both entertaining and enlightening.

Mr. Doiron has also been the leader of one of the most original and progressive gardening ideas I have heard yet: to put a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. The garden would serve as a positive, worldwide role model in an era of global warming and pesticides. Apparently, as Mr. Doiron writes, it is not the first time an idea like this was put in action:

One of the first things President John Adams did upon moving into the White House in 1800 was to plant a vegetable garden. In 1917, President Wilson brought in a herd of sheep to mow the lawns as a way of conserving resources - human, financial and fuel - for the wartime effort. In the 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt grew a Victory Garden inspiring countless others to do the same.

This is from a facebook group about the issue, seen here.

For more information, you can also visit the

official "eat the view" website (with a petition that all you loyal readers out there should sign)

or

the official "on day one" campaign idea website (of which it is the most popular first-day presidential campaign idea)

or

the "kitchen gardeners" website (about Mr. Doiron's steadily-growing group of people who believe in local gardening, globally)

Finally, here's a fantastic Boston Globe article about him, his story, and his superb idea.

So what does this have to do with our Yarmouth School Garden? Well, it brings to light a revolutionary notion; we are part of a global movement to support local gardening, to subvert transportation costs of non-domestic goods, to help individuals in need, and to share positive ideas to a starving earth by means of grassroots.

Or, to be especially clever: by means of vegetable roots.

And that, my friends, was a horrible joke.

Garden Update: July 8

Hello everyone.

"What are Conor and Leo up to now?" you're all asking. Well first off, I apologize for not posting sooner, but, to be honest in regards to our work for the past two weeks, not much has been going on.

Right now Leo and I are working on quite a large project: making a trench-sort-of-thing around the perimeter of the entire garden in order to stop the intrusion of grass and prepare for a rodent fence to be installed later. We are also very excited to help in the support of the extremely droop-prone tomato plants with twine and posts. Additionally, we are beginning routine weeding of the clover path and circle. Interesting stuff, I know.

On the frontier ahead, we're hopefully going to put a creative spin on things as we make a sign for the garden and work on an active, non-virtual message board for the garden shed.

General garden chores, as of now, include:

• weeding the circle of clover
• continue to remove small rocks from the garden
• sift and dump compost to lower parts of the garden
• combine the compost pile
• clean, sweep and organize the shed
• weed, hoe and mulch blueberries

Garden Timeline

What exactly have the group of master gardeners and volunteers done so far?
Let's have a look:

April 16 - host presentation by Roger Doiron
April 23 - the first till

May 2 - 200 5th and 8th graders (aka "Earth Buddies") pull rocks
May 9 - 2nd tillage (T. Sanders)
May 10 - master gardener workday
-install 6 raised beds (made by the generous Mr. Bray)
-lay out central path
May 14 and 15 - Leo and I till rocks and what not
May 16 - 9th grade community service day
-install fence posts
-dig trench
-fill rock path
-paint shed
-construct trellis
-construct tipis
-plant highbush
-compsost
-blueberries
May 20 - sow clover circle (Maryellen)
May 24 - plant onion seedlings (Marie)
May 28 - install 4 spigots (W. Michaelson)
May 31/June 1 - amend soil with 40 sq. yds of organic compost

June 4 - sow clover path (Sheri) and plant alyssum around circle
June 7 - finish fence (Scats, Olivas, Barberas, Thomas) and rototill (D. Leith)
June 10 - plant basil, tomatoes, begin herb garden (Marie, Sheri)

Hello There!

Hello and welcome.

Any venturer into cyberspace asks the same question when being introduced to a new face in this mysterious and sublime blogging continuum: who are these people and what are they doing here?

My name is Conor Gillies and, with my good friend Leo Oliva, we will be documenting our work, feelings, and thoughts as we spend our summer at the Yarmouth School Garden. Conceived by a wonderful group of coordinators, nutritionists, and master gardeners, the YSG is a vegetable garden designed to help promote organic farming while feeding the Yarmouth School System.

The whole thing reached newspaper-worthy proportions.

So how did we get involved?

Last April, Leo and I applied for the Yarmouth Alumni Association (or the YAA, as we affectionately know them) Community Stewardship Grant. The grant is described as thus:

"The YAA Community Stewardship Grant was created to fund a project by a YHS group of junior or senior students that meets an identified local need. Projects address issues of public health and welfare, education or environmentalism in the state of Maine."

Public health and welfare? Education? Environmentalism? What better a cause than a Community Garden? With high spirits and focused minds, the renowned Conor/Leo Duo struck again. With $3000 in funding, it was clear that grueling (but enlightening) adventures lay ahead.

So now, as the road ahead of us begins to clear, the need for documentation is apparent.

Indeed, this will be an experience.