Rotary and Rutgers Launch Enabling Garden Initiative

WHAT: Hands-on gardening and greening event symbolizing the start of the first growing season of the Rotary and Rutgers Enabling Garden Initiative for Central New Jersey. This initiative promotes the benefits of working with plants to all, irrespective of age, physical, mental, emotional, social or other limitations.

WHEN: Fri., March 23, 2012, 3:30-5 p.m.

WHERE: Rutgers Floriculture Greenhouses, 64 Nichol Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ. http://whereru.rutgers.edu/photosynths/189/Floriculture-Greenhouses.

WHO: Senator Christopher “Kip” Bateman, R-16.

Executive Dean Robert M. Goodman, Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and Executive Director, New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.

Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Al Murray, New Jersey Department of Agriculture.

Freeholder board representatives from Hunterdon and Somerset counties.

Representatives from the five counties of Rotary International District 7510 -- Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties.

BACKGROUND: Pilot sites in the five-county region of central New Jersey have been chosen to host  and implement enabling garden spaces, which are growing environments that invite and permit participation by various individuals and groups. Confirmed pilot sites include:

Middlesex County:     Rutgers Floriculture Greenhouses, New Brunswick
Hunterdon County:     Hunterdon County Arboretum, Lebanon
                                Rutgers Cooperative Extension, Rt. 12 County Complex, Flemington
Somerset County:     The Carrier Clinic, Montgomery
Union County:           Ground Works Elizabeth and Community Action Unlimited

Additional sites are pending in Mercer and Somerset counties.

About the Rotary and Rutgers Enabling Garden Initiative
The Rotary and Rutgers Enabling Garden Initiative promotes the creation of barrier-free, accessible gardens that allow anyone to grow native flowers, vegetables and herbs in a non-threatening environment. In turn, some of the product grown will be given to groups and people in need. The garden can be any size from a customized raised planter or planters to a larger space (indoors or outdoors). These spaces are built with modifications, the availability of lightweight adaptable, adjustable and interchangeable tools to maximize the opportunity for all individuals to participate in and draw connections to the garden. Read more at http://www.rotarynj.org/2011/rutgers_rotary_project.html.

University expertise in this initiative will include consumer horticulture, agriculture and plant science, soil sciences, landscape design and volunteer development.

Rotary International District 7510 consists of 42 clubs and over 1,200 members throughout the five counties of central NJ. Learn more at www.rotarynj.org.

An example of an Enabling Garden exists at the Chicago Botanical Garden and is available online at http://www.chicagobotanic.org/explore/enabling.php.

Rutgers offers both a degree and a certificate program in Horticultural Therapy that prepare students for work in various settings where plants are used to help people. Learn more about the Rutgers curriculum in Horticultural Therapy at http://aesop.rutgers.edu/~horttherapy/.