New Grant in Monroe Helping Residents Garden in Their Housing Community

Snohomish Conservation District (SCD) has partnered with Housing Hope (HH) through our National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD) Urban Agriculture grant to help provide fresh nutritious food to Housing Hope residents. HH promotes and provides affordable housing and tailored services to reduce homelessness and poverty for residents of Snohomish County and Camano Island. 

The work we did took place at the Monroe Family Village complex. They had an existing community garden here, but the soil that was in their raised beds was low quality fill dirt that was not good for gardening. The Vet Crew came in and dug out all of the old dirt from the beds, and replaced it with high quality vegetable garden mix soil. A large portion of this was donated by Cedar Grove. We then topped the garden beds off with some straw that was donated from Bobbi (a local rancher) to winterize the garden beds. 

It was a big job which required moving 10 yards of heavy soil up and down a flight of stairs and then up and down a hill. Our crew, not surprisingly, got a little creative with getting the soil down.

In the future, one of our Community Conservation Team members will be attending monthly meetings to further the residents' knowledge of good gardening and food growing techniques.