Planting Season at GRMC

Health and wellness includes exercise and healthy foods so GRMC employees went to work on planting a Giving Garden this week. Employees work in the garden – weeding and managing – during the growing season and help harvest the rewards. When the garden produces a surplus, donations are available to employees.

During peak season, the GRMC Day Camp participants will harvest and deliver produce to Mid-Iowa Community Action as a way to give back to the community. In 2014, the GRMC Giving Garden contributed more than 350 pounds of food to MICA for distribution to families in need.

In 2014, GRMC with Community Transformation Grant funds purchased gardening tools to create four community Giving Gardens. This helped launch the program.

In 2015, GRMC received a Grinnell College mini-grant to expand on this program and purchase additional equipment and tools for the Giving Gardens. The intent is to encourage gardening and help local residents produce safe, healthy foods.

Butterfly Gardens

GRMC’s commitment to the health and wellbeing of residents includes the creation of three Monarch Waystations on the campus this year.  Elizabeth Hill, Center for Prairie Studies and Conard Environmental Research Area at Grinnell College, and Tim Hammond, Grinnell College, helped GRMC employees plant the ideal habitat for Monarch butterflies. Doug Caulkins, Imagine Grinnell and retired Grinnell College faculty member, helped connect Hill with GRMC and foster this garden.

Be sure to check out the butterfly gardens throughout the growing season, located in the Healing Garden, near the Giving Garden, and on the west side of the Ahrens Medical Arts Building.

“Save the Monarch migration one butterfly at a time – plant milkweed”

For more information, check out http://www.monarchwatch.org/waystations/