Rocky Top library begins gardens project with help from UT
Rocky Top Public Library Director Kelly Harris shows the area behind the library on North Main Street where a vegetable garden will be planted as part of a garden initiative being aided by agents from the UT Agricultural Extension Service. (photo:G Chambers Williams III )
Kelly Harris, the library’s director, gave some details of the “Rocky Top Public Library Gardens Initiative” to the council during a presentation at the start of Thursday night’s October council meeting.
Harris said several areas around the outside of the library, in downtown Rocky Top, are already being prepared for the growing of flowers and vegetables.
The project is part of a demonstration effort that aims to help teach young people about gardening, she said.
“We will have a fenced vegetable garden area outdoors to give kids a chance to put their hands in the dirt,” she told the council.
Because Rocky Top is a “food desert,” where fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to find, Harris told The Courier News that she hopes this project will help get young people interested in growing some of their own food, as their grandparents once did in this area.
“It breaks my heart,” Harris said Friday at the library as she looked over the planned garden spots in front of and behind the building, along North Main Street.
“This is a food desert,” she said. “We come from farmers – people whose lives came out of the dirt. Gardens are the memories of my life.”
With help from Becky Lindsay, the library’s assistant director, the initiative is underway.
It’s being paid for entirely out of the library’s Anderson County-funded budget and through donations of time and materials, Harris
said.
No city money has been requested.
“We want to create gardens to wrap around the building to go from pollinator to compost,” she said.
“We initially will plant daffodils in front and vegetables in the rear, including green beans, corn, squash and tomatoes,” Harris said.
She also wants to plant some fruit trees.
“Now we get to have a garden, and the public is welcome to volunteer to help,” Harris said.
Phase 1 is the preparation of the ground, which is going on now.
Phase 2 will be the planting and cultivating of the crops, which mostly will not happen until spring.
Harris also plans a Phase 3, which would add a “rain garden” in the low-lying area between the side of the building and North Main Street to “absorb excess moisture” and preventhe usual flooding in that area, she said.
Helping with the project is Seth Whitehouse, who leads the UT Agricultural Extension Service’s Master Gardener Program, Harris said.