Lettuce, Arugula, Collards and Kale; that’s what we have been harvesting from the Adaptive Garden’s farm field.   The kids from Wando High School, Lincoln High School, Georgetown High School and Winwood Farms have been pinching leaves, sorting and washing the greens, and bagging up their harvest to sell in the Our Local Foods Farm Store on Hwy 17 N in McClellanville, SC.   They are very proud of their produce!  In fact, they are already helping to make the seed paper we will use to start our gardens for this spring.  Yes, that’s right, we have finally perfected something that looks like paper and has our spring seeds embedded right in it!  If you’re interested in stocking up on some for your own spring garden, look for it at the Farm Store.  It will be right there along side our very popular herbal and luffa, glycerin soaps and our newest product, bees wax candles!  We have been busy as bees making some lovely beeswax votive and 3 or 4 inch candles for your Thanksgiving table.   The kids have a great time making them and they smell really good!

Herb scented Soaps

For the last two weeks out here in the Adaptive Garden craft room, we have had a very special treat! Some very talented potters have donated their time and talent to teach us some new skills.  The kids at Lincoln High School, Leslie and I really want to thank Nancy Marshall and Dorthy Doubleday for coming out and helping the kids to make some lovely pottery Christmas ornaments, Botanical Impression Wall Pockets, and Botanical Impression Coasters and Trivets.  We love these ladies and we hope they want to come back every week!  We can’t wait to show off all of our pottery creations at the McClellenville Holiday fair Dec 4th and 5th!

If you would like to come and share your skills with us and the kids we work with, I would love for you to contact me at catherine@adaptivegardens.org.  We also really want to thank everyone that came out to Local Music on the Farm last Sunday- the  bands were great, the food was delicious, and the people were great to come out and show their  support.  We’re very Thankful for your Giving!
Hope you All have a Wonderful Thanksgiving, too!

Catherine McGuinn
Horticultural Therapist & Program Director of Adaptive Gardens of the Lowcountry

Also a special thank you to all of you who came out and made it a great day – we hope you’ll come have fun with us again the next time we have such a wonderful event hosted here at Thornhill Farm.

The Activity Center at Adaptive Gardens of the Lowcountry has been a busy place these last few weeks!  We have been perfecting our Germination Paper and our soaps have been flying off the shelfs at the “Our Local Foods” Country Store.  We have been harvesting our garden and sowing seeds that can over winter in the ground.  Our Gourdous surprises are almost complete and wont last long! They alone are worth the trip to the “Our Local Foods” Country Store outside McClellanville on Hwy 17 N.

there's a buzzing sound in the activity center

But, the best part of all this activity is that we are in the final preparations for “Local Music on the Farm”, this Sunday afternoon! We have some great local bands coming out to our farm stage and some magnificent food being prepared!  Friends and food, oysters and BBQ, music and hayrides; it doesn’t get any better than this!

Good food, good music, good times and all for a good cause!  See you this Sunday, November 8th!!!

Look for the gift baskets of AGL products in the silent auction!

- Catherine

Adaptive Gardens of the Lowcountry’s Horticultural Therapy classes have been such a success!  We have four mornings of classes, one for each of the three high schools (Wando High School, Georgetown High School and Lincoln High School) and the students at the Windwood Farms school and group home. That is a total of almost

Students working the garden

70 students with special needs coming out to the Adaptive Garden on Thornhill Farm!  We are teaching a lot of Horticulture and having a good time doing it!

We are so grateful to our for-profit partner, Our Local Foods, for making this program possible.  We like to give back to them as much as we can as well as to be as self sufficient as possible.  So, we created a whole line of AGL Cottage Industry products grown right in our very own Adaptive Garden to share with OLF and to provide you a tangible way of supporting us!   Our product line includes:

• organic soil mix
  
• herbal soaps
• herb starts for your garden
  
• coming soon – Germination paper!

The Farm Store at Our Local Foods

We are getting our very own organic soil mix tested as we speak!  This mix is so full of vitality you can smell it!  Look for our AGL label at your local garden store or swing by the Our Local Foods Farm Store and pick some up. While your here you can grab a variety of herb starts from our greenhouse which will be in full swing this Spring! One thing you might want to purchase on line is a few packages of our herbal and luffa soaps! They are in high demand at the OLF Farm Store! Come on out and see all the varieties we make or grab some online, they are going fast! We are still perfecting our papermaking skills, but we promise that our line of Germination Paper will be ready long before you start planning your spring garden. We have been experimenting with wildflower seeds we dried from our garden last spring. Maybe when you come by the store you can check up on our progress! With all these great students coming out every day, there is no shortage of helping hands! It may not be perfect yet, but we are having a lot of fun trying!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about our the Gourdous suprises we are making for Our Local Foods Farm Store. You really must come see.  You’ll be out of your gourd if you don’t love them!

See you in the garden!

Catherine McGuinn

Horticultural Therapist and Program Director Adaptive Gardens

Friends from Wando High School

Adaptive Gardens of the Lowcountry provides services to disabled High School students in the Charleston area through the use of horticultural therapy.  Our belief and experience is that engaging students in the hands-on operation of a gardening activity, from preparation through harvesting (and eating), has a clear positive effect on the participants.  Further, at the completion of this program, some of the students are also trained in small scale farming activities, and are prepared to take a position working in this field.  What is horticultural therapy?

Area high school students come to work in the adaptive  garden, typically working in the garden 1 or 2 days per week.  Adaptive Gardens currently works with 3 high schools in the Charleston, SC area: Wando High School, Georgetown High School, and Lincoln High School.  If your school is interested, please contact us.