With everything you already know about the history and current conditions of our global and local environment, you’ve probably wondered about what you can do in your own life to make a difference. For many, the first and most rewarding step comes in the form of fostering and caring for a healthy home garden. At Drumlin Farm’s Learning Garden, you can see first hand the possibilities of healthy home gardening. Our Learning Garden offers opportunities for visitors, including school and group programs, to see, smell, feel, taste, and touch veggies, flowers, and herbs that benefit their backyards, and the greater backyard of our shared communities.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Lincoln Cultural Council, we’ve recently added new interpretative signage to the garden on the power of pollination, composting, and choosing local. Our goal was to highlight the sustainable practices that we use in the garden and prompt our visitors to reflect on actions they can take, such as planting pollinator gardens, purchasing more local food, or starting a compost bin at home.  To spur the reader to deeply consider adopting an action, each sign’s message ends with a question about how you might implement similar changes at home. How can you help honeybees thrive? Could you start composting at home? How can you support your local farm? You’ll be surprised at how easy these changes are to make, and get to witness them in action in the garden.

As always, we strive to lead by example and teach our visitors how how a few, simple actions can make a big difference. We invite you to visit our learning garden, stroll through the wildflowers, stop and smell the fresh herbs, and observe how nearby honeybees and compost add to the productivity and sustainability of home gardening. How can you adapt these lessons at home?