The Garden at 485 Elm
People growing together:
A collaborative community garden in Montpelier, Vermont

Welcome to The Garden!

A Bouquet a Day Is the Beautiful Way

A Bouquet a Day Is the Beautiful Way

Flowers are a cherished garden crop. Gardeners snip blooms to brighten their homes and give gifts that warm hearts. For garden flowers to look like this, gardeners put in planning, work, and TLC. Members of the garden's Flower Power team select, start, plant, tend,...

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What else is growing at the garden?

A Flurry of Spring Planting

A Flurry of Spring Planting

Gardeners planted arugula, carrots, chard, kale, mustard greens, pac choi, snap and snow peas, and spinach in beds that had been covered in leaf mulch for the winter. They created narrow furrows, they mixed in compost, and dropped in the seeds. Finally, they watered...

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Planting Garlic in 2023 to Harvest in 2024

Planting Garlic in 2023 to Harvest in 2024

Once Vermont is well into fall frosts, it's garlic planting time. Waiting until extended warm spells have ended ensures the garlic won't germinate and begin growing until spring. Flashback to midsummer: We harvested the garlic planted in 2022 and reserved hundreds of...

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The Winter Squash Bed Becomes the Garlic Bed

The Winter Squash Bed Becomes the Garlic Bed

Winter squash harvest day comes before the first frost or after the squash have stopped maturing in each day's reduced sunlight and warmth. Gardeners harvested the squashes for sorting and distribution then pulled up the vines, which went onto the garden waste...

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Harvesting, Processing, Cooking, and Eating Edamame

Harvesting, Processing, Cooking, and Eating Edamame

Most of the garden's edamame was ready to harvest. These green plants in the foreground will grow a while longer, but the yellow plants you see the gardeners working on, and the ones way in the background between them, were ripe and ready. Instead of pulling out whole...

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Potato Harvest Day

Potato Harvest Day

Potatoes are one of the crops we harvest all at once and divide among gardeners. The others are edamame, garlic, onions, and winter squash. Other share-divided crops, when we grow them, include Brussels sprouts, seed pumpkins, and peanuts. Potatoes took up four short...

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In Which College Students Transform the Garden

In Which College Students Transform the Garden

Each garden season as the fall college semester approaches, students participating in the University of Vermont TREK program arrive at the garden. The Garden at 485 Elm is so lucky to be a destination for TREK service volunteers! Several 485 Elm gardeners joined the...

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Garlic to Seed and to Feed

Garlic to Seed and to Feed

Garlic harvest day included the last of the onions. The gorgeous harvest yielded robust shares of garlic and onions for gardeners here and for the Montpelier Food Pantry as well as our entire stock of garlic seed, which we'll plant later in the fall. Garlic heads pull...

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The Power of Flowers

The Power of Flowers

The garden is overflowing with fresh vegetables, herbs, and, yes, flowers. Three rows and trellises for climbing flowers host varieties that attract pollinators, beautify the garden, and bloom for gardeners who harvest them, take them home, and give them as gifts....

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