JMG Habitat Home Kitchen Garden

Service and partnership overview:

The mission of the National Junior Master Gardener Program is “GROWING GOOD KIDS by igniting a passion for learning, success, and service.”  Local Brazos County 4-H Junior Master Gardeners have met over the last few years having a great deal of fun working & learning together.  Now these hard-working and service-oriented JMG youths propose to give back to their community in a new and very special partnership.

Research shows that Americans’ diets, particularly those of low-income households, fall short of recommendations in the quantity of fruits and vegetables consumed. The long term health impact of diets lacking nutrition is significant. Some primary reasons why people do not choose to include more fruits/vegetable with meals include lack of availability, cost, personal preference, or a lack of understanding of our nutritional needs.

This proposal seeks to address these factors and improve the diets of one family at a time through installation of JMG Habitat Home Kitchen Gardens. Research also shows that if a child has the experience of growing something in the garden, they are more likely to eat it and adopt it into their diet. The easy-to-manage 4’X8’ kitchen garden beds would be installed, with the help of homeowners, at completion of local Habitat builds.  

The Brazos County 4-H JMGers commits to plan the garden work day, solicit support, gather supplies, coordinate youths/volunteers to install gardens with homeowners, and the JMG youth would provide info to teach homeowners how to maintain and harvest from their garden.