A Year of Flourishing Partnerships
Every year, the Roosevelt Home Garden’s community partnerships pay huge rewards to our garden, the park, and its visitors. Through partnerships, we gain knowledge, expand our outreach, get inspired, and inspire others.
Dutchess Outreach: Our Partner in Food Access
Dutchess Outreach, the garden’s partner in community access to locally grown food, is a constant source of ingenuity and innovation in addressing community needs. This year, they revamped their market to make it the most enjoyable and inclusive farm market in the region. Changes include: the schedule – now once a week on Wednesdays; the location – right next to their own beautiful production and community garden at the Family Partnership in Poughkeepsie; and their pricing – pay what you can or free. In combination, these adjustments have created a market that welcomes everyone and offers a joyful way for all of us to celebrate and benefit from locally grown food. This year, 360 crates of produce grown in the Roosevelt Home Garden were donated to Dutchess Outreach, which is the largest donation from any farm or organization to the market. We look forward to bringing additional donations next year to supplement the growing need for fresh produce. Participating in this market supports all of Dutchess Outreach Feeding programs, so please check it out in 2024.
Partners in Education:
From Pre-K to College, and Beyond
Overlapping interests and missions have connected us in new and meaningful ways with our partners in schools, colleges, and life-long learning programs.
Park staff visited the Pre-K/K classroom at Poughkeepsie Day School this spring to help them plant their garden for a curriculum that culminated with their own farmstand at school. The class came to the Roosevelt vegetable garden a few weeks later to help us with some big garden projects!
Collaboration with the Culinary Institute of America generated a range of unique educational opportunities throughout the year. Fourteen Masters in Sustainable Food Systems students visited the park in the summer, and 20 Farm to Table Students came for a tour of the garden and archives, where they explored the journals of the Roosevelt’s Gardener, examined historic photos and interesting artifacts like Eleanor Roosevelt’s Japanese pruners and a jar of Val Kill honey labeled for holiday giving. These college students returned later to join the PDS Pre-K/K group, harvesting produce for a cooking class back at school with the kids. We were delighted to see how our garden has become a catalyst for bringing partner groups together!
Thanks to our ongoing partnership with Vassar College we welcomed Morgan Miller, a Science, Technology and Society student. Morgan split her days between horticulture every morning and independent research every afternoon. She pursued research on Springwood Estate management in the FDR Presidential library where her work resulted in the translation of a shorthand notebook of Sara Delano Roosevelt’s dictated correspondence which sheds light on her day to day affairs. Morgan also developed an interactive mapping tool for sharing information on the garden designs of Beatrix Farrand across the country, and developed a tool for evaluating the impact of a new public tour of the vegetable garden developed this year. She won the Open Space Institute’s Barnabas McHenry award for her work in landscape preservation and conservation.
Gardens inspire life-long learning, and we were fortunate to see the robust return of adult learners to the vegetable garden this year. The Cultural Landscape Foundation brought landscape architects and landscape afficionados to the garden. Bard Life Long Learning students dove into soil science with a lab-based class led by our horticulturists. Garden clubs are happily back to visiting with expert questions and lively curiosity.
Local Library Partners
Library partnerships were especially fruitful this year. NPS Horticulturist Susan MacAvery participated in the FDR library/NPS collaboration “Common Ground” video series. Her interview about the Roosevelt vegetable garden with FDR library Education Specialist, Jeff Urbin, can be viewed below.
Partners Within the Park
Our colleagues in the interpretation and cultural resources programs advanced the garden in several new ways. Interpretive Ranger Megan Porter developed a tour of the garden for visitors that connects the garden themes to the Roosevelt legacy and history in Hyde Park. Ranger Elizabeth Walden used her masterful photography and journalism skills to share garden updates through some of the most liked social media posts in the park. NPS carpenter, Chad Rymph, constructed the beautiful new garden information kiosk designed by our 2022 Vassar College Intern.
Dave Hayes, Resource Management Team Leader, retired this year. Dave has been instrumental in the re-establishment of the vegetable garden since the earliest planning stages. He supported the garden to the very end of his tenure, constructing the wooden grape arbor at the northwest corner of the garden and freeing our tractor from a giant hunk of buried rubble in the midst of spring planting season. Dave is missed on every conceivable level; his legacy is large in the vegetable garden.
Research Partners
Cornell University continues to be our go-to partner for research-based information on soils, crop production and organic pest management. Their soil lab analyzed our vegetable garden samples and determined we have achieved an excellent level of soil health over the past five years, but reducing tillage in the future will help us to improve even more. We used Cornell’s guidance to establish a comprehensive program to manage pests of cucurbits this year, including the use of trap crops, landscape fabric ground covers, resistant varieties, bug-picking, and organic sprays. Last year, Cornell Cooperative Extension advised and loaned us equipment for a beneficial nematode trial. Thanks to this help, the garden had fewer problems this year with soil born insect pests (onion/cabbage maggots and wireworms) and produced a bumper crop of delicious Upstate Abundance potatoes.
Garden Volunteers
Perhaps our closest partnership of all is with the amazing volunteers who help us to plan, plant, maintain, and harvest the garden. Eleven new and repeating volunteers joined the ranks this year, with a total of 75 volunteers contributing 1,013 hours caring for the vegetable garden and the Rose Garden & Gravesite at the Home of FDR.
The Landscape and Garden Division of the Roosevelt Vanderbilt NHS thanks the Franklin D. Roosevelt Hyde Park Foundation for their continued support of the Home Garden Restoration. Their support ensures the interpretation of an important legacy of the Roosevelt family in Hyde Park and allows us to connect our community and visitors to their stories.
