Community Gardens

Food Security

Sustainable Woodstock's Food Security Work

We cannot achieve a sustainable society or environment without ensuring that everyone has access to the means to not only live, but to live well. Our food security work sets out to provide access to food– a fundamental right– while also providing free access to land for community members that wish to use our community gardens to grow produce.

Started in 2009 under the guidance of master gardener Anne Dean, we run two community gardens at Billings Farm and King Farm in partnership with Billings Farm and the Vermont Land Trust. These gardens service over 30 families and organizations, and have dedicated growing space to produce vegetables for the Woodstock Community Food Shelf. Our gardens are organic and observe “no-till” or “minimal disturbance” gardening principles.

Gardeners pay a small sliding-scale fee to cover garden preparation and maintenance costs. For more information or to check plot availability, contact us at gardener@sustainablewoodstock.org.

Grow Your Own Garden Program

Since 2020 Sustainable Woodstock has been distributing beginner Grow Your Own Garden Kits free of charge to individuals and families who want to produce their own food and increase long-term food security. Each free kit includes a complete set of quality seeds, seedlings and a beginner’s book on organic gardening. This program is open to families who would not otherwise be able to afford to garden.

The Grow Your Own Garden project has enabled and empowered some 600 people of all ages to establish new gardens and grow their own nutritious vegetables and herbs— now and into the future—including children and adults throughout the towns of Barnard, Bridgewater, Bridgewater Corners, Killington, North Pomfret, Plymouth, Pomfret, Perkinsville, Reading, Rochester, Rutland, South Royalton, Stockbridge, Taftsville, West Bridgewater, White River
Junction and Woodstock.

Thank you to our 2024 sponsors: Vermont Community Foundation and Resilience Hub/BALE. Our partners include: Sherburne Farms, Yankee Bookshop, and West Lebanon Feed & Supply.

Community Food Security Support

Sustainable Woodstock works to address the critical need for sustenance as the root of sustainability for individuals, families and communities.

In 2010, Sustainable Woodstock helped build and maintain raised beds alongside individual mobile homes at the Riverside Mobile Home Park. After the park was badly damaged by tropical storm Irene, we returned to rebuild those gardens in time for the 2012 summer growing season. More recently, we returned in the spring of 2022 and 2023 to build new raised beds for Riverside Residents. In 2024 we built 16 beds with the guidance of park resident and carpenter Dan Putnam!

Sustainable Woodstock has also helped establish gardens behind Mellishwood affordable housing and at the Woodstock Elementary School.

Riparian Buffer Restoration & Garden Adaptation for Sustainable Woodstock Community Garden at Billings Farm

Sustainable Woodstock is working with several partners and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources to restore the riparian buffer where the northern edge of our community garden at Billings Farm borders Barnard Brook. A 30% design has been completed with a generous grant from Watersheds United Vermont. Funding is now being sought for a 100% design, which will lay the groundwork to restore the riverbank to a healthy buffer. This will entail losing roughly 25% from the north end of the garden, which will be offset by creating an equal-sized new addition to the south end of the garden, as shown in the following map.

Food Security

Sustainable Woodstock's Food Security Work