Program areas at Unity Gardens
2023 Free-Pick Gardens: Unity Gardens connects our community to fresh food, nature and one another through 40+ free pick gardens and orchard sites. The 7 acre main site is the hub of operations. Through this site, we support over 40 satellite Unity Gardens where our community can pick fresh fruits and vegetables without any barriers to access. The main site has garden guides-employees who will help harvesters navigate the garden and discover the fruits and vegtables, sharing recipes,information on our programs, classes and more! Through our satellite gardens and community partners, we also add to the available fresh fruits and vegtetables by putting them on the sharing shelf for garden visitors to enjoy.
2023 Farm to Market: Unity Gardens has a dedicated, separate area at the main garden to grow food for sale, creating revenue for organizational sustainability and mission support. In addition to fresh fruits, herbs and vegetables, Unity Gardens creates value added products such as cold processed soaps, bees wax candles and hand balms, veggie pun cards, and honey based foods. We have 2 market areas; One at the South Bend Farmers Market and another onsite at our main garden Welcome Center.
2023 Educational Programming: Unity Gardens educational programs have expanded in depth and breadth with new infrastructure and classes We have onsite classes hosted in our new Welcome Center, a 4 season off-the-grid Geodome designed to host field trips and connect youth to the joy of gardening and principles of renewable energy all year round and an Edgy Veggie bus to take our best programs and classes on the road,reaching more deeply into our community.In addition to our ongoig garden and nature classes, we have engaged over 700 children with Edgy Veggie in 2023!