Alicia’s passion for growing food as medicine and spending more time outside came through strong when two GRuB Staff visited her garden in late August 2023. Alicia received her first garden from the GRuB Garden Project the same year and she’s grateful for the experience and support in reaching her personal gardening goals. Alicia aspired to grow enough food and herbs to preserve some and stretch the food budget, because we all know how expensive food has gotten these days! As an added benefit, Alicia says she’s also lost weight due to being outside more and working on the garden! She is currently growing tomatoes, radishes, snap peas, rainbow chard, cabbage, red russian kale, pumpkin, cucumber, many herbs, and marigolds too!
Alicia says there are “so many positive [aspects] of the GGP program... [the experience] brings me back to the positives of my childhood.” Now she’s seeing the fruits of this labor with her daughter. Alicia beams as she tells the GRuB team how her daughter is learning all about gardening and gaining a deep appreciation for how food is grown. “Watching her do things that have been forgotten, knowing that she’s going to have that knowledge in the future. She’ll tell you what yarrow is!” One of their favorite things to do in the garden is to eat food right off the plant, “pick a snap pea and eat it right there, pick a tomato and just eat it.”
Not all the benefits of the program are tangible. Alicia describes a sense of peace when working in her garden as she tells us her experience of “[putting] your hands in the dirt and just being…”
Alicia expresses a deep sense of gratitude with the GRuB Garden Project and “just being a part of the GRuB community... I am so thankful and excited to be a part of the GRuB family! It was amazing to have 3 generations (my mom, myself, and my daughter) with our hands in the soil, nourishing our souls and our bodies. Seeing my daughter learn skills that my mom taught me when I was little is knowledge coming full circle. Thank you, GRuB!"
We’re so grateful for you too, Alicia!!
