Local Woman Teaches Simple Gardening in Vancouver and Beyond.
All it took was a book to get Kris Potter out of the house and into her garden.
“My husband and I tried to have a garden,” Potter said, “but we always started with too big an area and then it got overwhelming. We just couldn’t keep up with it, and we got very discouraged.”
Potter found her stride after reading about square foot gardening, a planting and maintenance technique in a small, raised bed.
“It seemed very compact and very un-intimidating, and that was when I really started gardening,” she said.
Soon, Potter began teaching gardening classes at an alternative school in Camas, but it was after a term with AmeriCorps learning about composting and recycling and meeting the coordinator of the Clark County Homegrown Garden Project that she became involved with gardening for the county.
The Homegrown Garden Project was a 2007 experiment by Clark County Public Health (CCPH) in getting low-income families in Clark County to eat the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. Homegrown provided gardening mentors, education and tools so the 58 participants could grow their own produce and be excited about eating healthy food they had grown.
A summarizing release from CCPH referred to the project as a “true block grant success,” reporting about 50 percent of the gardeners eating more produce.
Potter took over coordinating the garden project in 2008, and when the county decided to put Homegrown to bed that year, she took it on under her own company, Family Gardening. When grant money ran out in 2010, Potter decided to continue the project on her own. With Potter’s help, more than 100 beds around the county have been installed in community areas. There are currently beds in Ridgefield, Brush Prairie, Vancouver Heights, Washougal, Battle Ground, and Hazel Dell.
“I’m actually working with several schools and churches,” Potter said. “I’ve been trained and certificated as a school garden coordinator, so I have resources and consultations that I can offer to schools and churches to get their gardens going.”
Potter and other volunteers continue to teach free classes around Clark County on organic gardening. Topics include square foot gardening, lasagna gardening – a method of layering compostable and organic materials to create loose, nutrient-rich soil that is easy to work with and low maintenance to plant in – and putting the garden to bed at the end of the season. There are 15 new beds going in at three sites around the county, and Potter is planning lasagna gardening workshops at all of these sites within the next several weeks.
For more information about any of the workshops, email Potter at [email protected].
Reach Managing Editor Ashleen Aguilar at [email protected].
