Home-grown vegetables, herbs can stretch food budgets as prices rise
Katherine Kokal
Palm Beach Post USA TODAY NETWORK
JUPITER – Although Hattie Dupree grew up in rural Clewiston, she’d never spent much time growing any plants or her own food.
“I’m a country girl, I promise, but I’d never planted anything. I’d never dug into the dirt,” she said. “I love plants and flowers, but mine are all artificial because I always kill them.”
That changed when she and more than a dozen other older and retired local residents gathered at Jupiter’s Edna Runner Tutorial Center in early December to plant “giving gardens” – vegetables and herbs they brought home and planted to share with their neighborhoods.
“I’d never been able to watch something grow,” Dupree said of her collard greens, which she noted are already taking off.
The Giving Gardens project, funded by a $100,000 grant, aims to fight poverty by creating more options for fresh food in communities around northern Palm Beach County. The grant, awarded in June, was from Impact the Palm Beaches, a women’s philanthropic organization that donates money to educational, arts, culture and environmental organizations.
