“Our community is large and wildly diverse, which is at the same time our strength and our weakness. #Activate10 is a movement seeking to increase communication between individuals and organizations across Fremont County and to promote positive action in our communities.”
Victory Garden 2020 popped up on social media over the past two weeks as COVID-19 has created increased uncertainty in our local community. Several organizations and educators who collaborate on the yearly Garden Expo (canceled this year) have joined the Victory Gardens 2020 movement to promote sustainable living.
“The desire [of the campaign] is to run this spring as a unified force for not only convincing people to garden who never have, convincing those who do garden to maybe plant a little more, but also to educate,” said Griff Sprout, owner of Sprouts Greenhouse located outside of Lander. “None of us can predict what the future can be coming up, but the one thing that we can do is to make sure we are self-sufficient as far as food goes.”
Griff is spearheading this community movement he originally called, “Grow a Big Garden,” to share the importance of gardening and being self-sustainable during times of uncertainty.
The ramifications of growing a big garden is we are going to take care of our needs.
History buffs out there might be familiar with the Victory Gardens of both World Wars that were promoted by the government for the purpose of ensuring readily available food during war times. The Grow a Big Garden campaign quickly became Victory Garden 2020 after a few folks talked with Griff about these gardens from US history. You can learn more about Victory Gardens by clicking here.
Sprouts Greenhouse, UW Fremont County Extension, UW Wind River Extension, Popo Agie Conservation District, Lower Wind River Conservation District, Sweetwater Gardens, Lander Community Garden, Riverton Local FoodHub, Wind River Farm to Plate, and the Fremont County Master Gardeners are all working to provide our local community the education needed to grow and maintain a garden in Fremont County’s unique climate.
Everything for this campaign has been developed quickly including the Victory Garden 2020 website and Facebook page. New content is added almost daily to the pages. Griff is also passionate about getting kids involved with gardening and especially now that a lot of parents became homeschool teachers in the past two weeks. He’s dedicated a page of the website on how to incorporate kids into gardening.
Part of community education is a FREE weekly online gardening class. They are scheduled on Wednesdays at 4:00 pm. You can find updates about those meetings on Victory Garden 2020’s Facebook page (link above). These meetings are recorded and will eventually be on the Victory Garden 2020’s website (link above), but for now, they are on the UW Fremont County Extension’s YouTube channel. Last week’s class is shared at the bottom of this post.
This week’s class information:
Last week’s gardening class:
Below is the very first gardening class: