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HOGANSVILLE— While many youths in the area are spending their spring break vacations at the beach or at home enjoying video games, several students with the Troup County 4-H program spent the start of their break adding some amenities to the Hogansville Active Life’s community garden.

Participants with the 4-H program spent most of Tuesday afternoon spreading mulch, breaking up rich dirt and even planting seed potatoes along the garden that the community will soon be able to access.

4-H Youth Program Assistant Taylor Moosman and Troup County Master Gardener Patrick Bexton taught the students and about permaculture and other gardening techniques.

Bexton helped plant cut-up seed potatoes, which have the capacity to grow dozens of potatoes per plant. He said the potatoes should be ready for harvesting in early summer.

In May 2021, Hogansville Active Life partnered with environmental organization GaiaTribe to create a community garden on the plot of land next to the center’s building. The initial idea was for the garden to be a vegetable garden where seniors of the community could access fresh produce.

Stephanie Culver, secretary of the GaiaTribe, said the idea has since softened to a more visually appealing project for the community to benefit from, though food items like herbs are still being grown.

“The change is, rather than this be a garden to provide vegetables for the community, it [exists] to teach [community members] to grow their own food,” Culver said. “The vegetables that are grown here can go toward the seniors at the senior, although we’d also like to harvest some of the vegetables to make dishes for events at the senior center.”

Sandra Jonas, the owner of Recreating Eden Landscape Design in Hogansville, donated compost and assisted with coming up with the design for the garden’s spiral-shaped vegetable garden, Culver said. The vegetable garden contains vegetables on the outside of the internal herb spiral. There are additional plans to include seating, picnic tables and a checkerboard around the garden in the future, possibly from recycled tires, Culver said. Diverse Power donated mulch and Landscape Supple Company donated topsoil for the 4-H students to use in the garden. 

The hope is that 4-H students participating in the process will inspire them to become interested in gardening, Culver said.

“With things going on in the world the way they are, we might not be able to feed the whole community, but we can teach them that this is the perfect time [to learn to garden],” she said.

Culver said she hopes the garden will be complete by June 21, the summer solstice. Any area garden organizations are welcome to add to the garden and help maintain it, she said. Interested parties can contact the Active Life Center of Hogansville.