WVU Extension Morgan County CEOS Garden Club
9/11 Memorial Universal Garden Project
The Morgan County Community Educational Outreach Service (CEOS) Garden Club is a new voluntary nonprofit association focused on serving our community by fostering economic sustainability and equality through free educational offerings and supplies surrounding home gardening, environmentally safe practices, and food preservation. In its commitment to provide an inclusive space for all members of the community, the CEOS Garden Club wants to establish a 9/11 Memorial Universal Garden in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia to not only honor our Mountaineers directly impacted by the events on September 11, 2001, but to also serve Morgan County’s Senior Citizens, Veterans, those with disabilities and/or special needs, and those of any age who face food insecurities on a daily basis.
This garden will provide all local citizens with a universally designed, fully accessible, ADA compliant community garden. It will contain a 9-11 Memorial bench with commemorative plaque, space for demonstration gardens to be used for free educational workshops, and ADA compliant raised garden beds and accessible paths for community members with mobility issues. Signage will be available in braille and visual alert devices will be placed strategically for the hearing impaired. One of the demonstration gardens maintained by the Garden Club will be a sensory garden designed specifically for community members with special needs. There will also be a demonstration garden for our 4-H Clubs and Master Gardeners. Since we currently do not have an ADA accessible garden space in Morgan County, it will be a first of its kind, being both scalable and replicable should other counties in the state want to follow this model.
Further, this garden will contain access to a Food Preservation Library we will establish where residents can borrow food preservation equipment such as canners, canning equipment, dehydrators, and vacuum sealers. Safe canning and food preservation practices will be shared through on-site workshops and educational outreach utilizing science based WVU Extension educational materials. All this will be at no cost to the public. In addition to a food preservation library, a Container Garden Educational Project will stem from this sight. This project will provide 5-gallon containers, seeds, gardening tools, watering cans, etc. to town residents who do not have access to a planting space at their residence. Recipients will be teamed up with Garden Club members and Master Gardeners to teach them container gardening while also mentoring them throughout the growing season.
I have already submitted several grants and am continuing to aggressively apply for grants and seek donations to get this project off the ground and to ensure its long-term success and ultimate sustainability. In 2024, our main goal is to secure a location for the future garden in time for a groundbreaking ceremony on September 11, 2024. The remainder of the garden building and infrastructure installation would occur in 2025 and beyond. We intend to partner with as many associations and organizations in town as well to aid in the dissemination of education and fresh foods grown in the demonstration gardens to local food banks, after school and summer school students, and anyone else in need.
This is where you come in. As most of you know, I have been looking for a location which can support this vision. It needs to be a location which can allow the building of a secure permitter fence in addition to the building of accessible paths and raised beds.
I respectfully ask you to consider whether there is any space available at our Extension office and Pines Opportunity Center complex or if there is another location in the county that could suit this project. If the Pines Opportunity Center could work, we could beautify the entire complex by strategically placing demonstration and show gardens in addition to a fenced in community garden. These additional garden installations would not need to be secured and would be managed by volunteers through WVU Extension whereas the memorial garden would need secured to protect the community beds inside.
In conclusion, I would like to thank you for your time and leave you with one final thought from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope if it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.
- WVU/CEOS Mission Statement. From CEOS. (2023, December 13) In WVU Extension. https://extension.wvu.edu/comm...nal-outreach-service.
- In Morgan County alone, over 2,000 households received assistance from Mountaineer Food Bank in the year 2020. From Hundreds of Food Insecure Families in Eastern Panhandle Turn to Mountaineer Food Bank for Assistance. (2021, June 24) In Mountaineer Foodbank. https://www.mountaineerfoodban...-bank-for-assistance
- Morgan County has the highest percentage of people aged 65 and over 17.8% of Morgan County residents reported receiving less than $25K annually. From Community Health Needs Assessment, War Memorial Hospital. (2022) In Valley Health War Memorial Hospital. https://www.valleyhealthlink.c.../WarMH-CHNA-2022.pdf
- US Department of Agriculture Low-income census tracts where a significant number or share of residents is more than 1 mile (urban) or 20 miles (rural) from the nearest supermarket.Approximately 8.2% of Morgan County residents are without vehicles and live more than one-half mile from a supermarket. From Low Income/Low Access. (2019) In GIS Portal, USDA.gov. https://gisportal.ers.usda.gov...ncome_Lowaccess.html
- According to West Virginia World Life Expectancy, Mineral and Morgan counties compared unfavorably to the national level on nine indicators reporting 10 – 49 percent worse than the national average. From WV Health Ranking, Live Longer Live Better. (2014) In World Life Expectancy. https://www.worldlifeexpectanc...tancy-by-county-male
- From WV Food Link: The population over the age of 65 is 4,158. The population with a disability is 2,788. There are 3,001 people under the age of 18. In fiscal year 2022, there were 2,194 SNAP recipients. (2022) In WV Food Link. https://foodlink.wvu.edu/pages...431e8c2b0cd1931e46ab
- As of 2022, there are 1,528 Veterans in Morgan County, WV. (2022) In Census.gov. https://www.census.gov/quickfa...stvirginia/RHI525222
- According to WV Food Link, in April of 2022, Charleston City Council used ARPA funds to revitalize a dilapidated building to convert it to a community grocery store that participates with SNAP Stretch to improve community food security. (2023) In WV Food Link. https://foodlink.wvu.edu/apps/...847aa298f82c/explore
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