Gardening for your Health and Community Featuring Erin Neal

The Helpful Gardeners

Gardening is good for our health and our community. We are so fortunate to have our friend, and neighbour, Erin Neal on the podcast! Learn more about Erin's important work in community support and the impacts gardening has had on her and on her role with the Calgary Drop-in Centre. The partnership between Golden Acre and the Drop-in Centre is a beautiful one and hopefully will inspire a similar project in your community!

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In this weeks episode ....

• 00:00 | Introduction
• 03:50 | Interview with Erin Neal from the Calgary Drop-in Centre
  • 04:45 | Gardening through Childhood
  • 09:12 | Gardening with the Calgary Drop-in Centre
  • 20:50 | Erin's gardening tip
• 22:15 | How Golden Acre & the Calgary Drop-in Centre came together
• 26:30 | Question of the Week

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Special Guest | Erin Neal

Erin is the Senior Coordinator for Affordable Housing at the Calgary Drop-In Centre and has been in the sector for over 15 years, serving those experiencing homelessness. She has a personal interest in gardening, and this is a part of her self-care routine. One specific project Erin supports with Golden Acres help, is the Greenview Rise community garden. It is in its 3rd growing year and offers a creative space for community members who have exited homelessness to engage in their varying abilities to garden.

During our gardening day, with Colin and Jimmy, some of the highlights was on how to attract different pollinators into the garden and how often gardeners should be fertilizing their plants.

Residents were able to choose what they planted in their gardening plots and there was a mixture of herbs, vegetables, berries, and flowers available. One resident said "I saw a lot of happy faces gardening today for the first time ever . . . it creates a sense of ownership, pride, and accomplishment. I had a wonderful time interacting with the garden folks and it means residents joining and relating to our new shared hobby."

Erin looks forward to supporting the Greenview Rise Community Garden looks forward through this season and many of the residents have already been discussing how they will share their harvests with each other and incorporate them into their recipes.

RESOURCES

Calgary Drop-in Centre

Article: "Community Gardens at the DI"

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