Brunswick Community College
ER-T2-2: Organic Garden

On the curriculum side, Horticulture also has a green house that is utilized for hands-on gardening experience in courses. Specific class descriptions are available in the Student Handbook/Catalog online. Specifics: "Ornamental Garden - The first "garden" that we created in our new facility is directly out the back door. This ornamental garden is called the greenhouse garden due to its close proximity to the greenhouse. The site here does not drain well, as the footprint for this site used to serve as aquaculture ponds. Our first priority on every project is drainage before we can move to the exciting components. Our greenhouse garden is intended to serve as an identification garden for our plant id classes and to beautify the site. Even though this garden will have its first full spring this year, we are beginning work on the site directly adjacent. We will provide continuity and flow to the gardens as folks enjoy their time spent here. This project, as with all of our projects, was completed by the students and they participated in each phase of the planning, development and completion stages." "Fruit Garden - We began last year designing and building a fruit garden behind our greenhouses. The students created the design, marked it off, tilled, constructed and will soon begin planting the garden. We will plant and attempt to grow blackberries, raspberries, blueberries (Highbush and Rabbiteye), figs, and asparagus. If we find success, we will most certainly expand into other selections. This is in an effort to move toward an "edible landscape" mind set and will include vegetables in the future. The bees partially sparked this idea and will be very beneficial in this endeavor." BRUNSWICK INTERAGENCY PROGRAM, which enables adults with Developmental Disabilities to fully participate in their communities (BIP) has a greenhouse and the students grow plants to sell at a spring plant sale each year.

"Brunswick Interagency Program encourages adults diagnosed with Intellectual Disabilities to improve their employability skills and literacy through our BIP Greenhouse Program. The BIP program currently serves 143 students with ID/DD. Students rotate through our greenhouse every 60 minutes, Monday through Friday, in order to perform plant identification, watering, soil preparation, and plant propagation. This learning environment provides encouragement, confidence, self esteem building and social skills for our most challenging students. Working with plants continues to serve as an innovative way to teach a number concepts through repotting cuttings and sowing seeds, plant terminology and expand vocabulary. Our students have selected this program as one of the areas in which they are most satisfied with at the Brunswick Interagency Program." Greg Bland, email 2/12/2012