A grant from Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) funded the project, which was also used to create a garden for the culinary program at the Horizons Alternative High School in Mohawk.

The gardens were planned to be built last summer, but were delayed because of the pandemic, said Angie Carter, an assistant professor of environmental and energy justice at Michigan Technological University. She applied for the grant along with Rachael Presley, assistant regional planner for the Western Upper Peninsula Planning & Development Region (WUPPDR), and Michelle Seguin, director of community health at Portage Health Foundation.

They’d been planning collaboratively over Zoom for the past year. Students doing independent research with Carter helped come up with ideas for the garden and building the beds.

“We wanted to do this last year, but better that we get to do it in person together,” she said.

Photo provided by Angie Carter Volunteers help construct a therapy garden at the Barbara Kettle Gundlach Shelter Saturday. Gardens at the shelter and Horizons Alternative High School were funded through a Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) grant.

Seguin had a pre-existing relationship with Horizons, and knew of their culinary program, Carter said. Pressley had been talking with shelter director Mary Niemela as it was getting ready to relocate to its current building, which had its ribbon-cutting in April.

“We need gardens for food, and learning about food and health, but gardens are also therapeutic and calming spaces,” Carter said. “Our hope is that Horizons’ garden and this therapy garden could maybe be models for other schools or social service agencies to build gardens.”

The Gundlach Shelter collaborated on the plants and design, and chose where to put it, Niemela said. She had wanted a garden at the shelter before, but the location made it less accessible, Niemela said.

“It’s nice to look at something that’s blooming,” she said. “Or sometimes it’s therapy to go out and take dead leaves or flowers off, so there’s always new growth.”

Instead of the food crops of the Horizons garden, the Gundlach Shelter garden is centered on child-friendly plants that won’t require as much maintenance.

Photo provided by Angie Carter Volunteers help construct a therapy garden at the Barbara Kettle Gundlach Shelter Saturday. Gardens at the shelter and Horizons Alternative High School were funded through a Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) grant.

The garden will have a mix of annuals and perennials, and include things like native wildflowers and snapdragons, said Abbey Palmer of Michigan State University Extension. She also wanted to incorporate sensory plants with a mix of colors and textures, such as woolly thyme.

“This garden is designed to be a healing space, a place that feels at home in your body, so we want to put some things that are fun to touch,” she said. “…So as people come into the garden, they’re invited to interact with it.”

Purple flowers were chosen to represent domestic violence awareness. Many of the wild and natie plants are also attractive to pollinators, Palmer said.

Volunteers built three beds with blocks provided by Superior Sand. Ends of some of the blocks were shaved off to fit to the design, then placed at the bottom for drainage.

“We wanted to make something that was pretty to look at in the windows that wasn’t just the concrete, and would hold up to the winter,” Carter said.

Helping to build the garden Saturday were several members of the Keweenaw Roller Derby. After also having worked on the Mohawk garden earlier this month, they were better at problem-solving and could work faster, said Emily Shaw, the team’s community relations chair.

With no bouts this year, the team is giving back to its community partners,.including the Girl Scouts, Dial Help and the shelter.

“They’ve been at our bouts and we’ve helped with fundraisers, so we thought this was a really great way to use our muscles and also help out an organization that we care about and want to succeed,” Shaw said.