16 Tuesday Oct 2018
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Friends of the Soldiers Home garden volunteers have completed this season’s third and final batch of flower bouquets for the Armed Forces Retirement Home-DC cafeteria. The flowers look great! We’re grateful to volunteers Linda Cotton, Carol Herwig and Susan Minnemeyer, who grew and tended the flowers throughout the season. Thank you gardeners for bringing additional beauty to a Home of beautiful residents!
27 Tuesday Feb 2018
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The Community-Resident Garden at the Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH) has garden space available!
The garden provides AFRH Residents and individuals from the surrounding neighborhoods an opportunity to garden, build friendships, and have fun. The Friends of the Soldiers Home manages the garden in partnership with the AFRH.
Joining the garden entails a volunteer commitment of two hours per month and annual dues of $25 for a 200 square foot plot or $35 for 400 square feet (for experienced gardeners, subject to availability). Plots are for growing annual flowers and vegetables for household use.
Volunteer duties include helping AFRH Residents to garden and helping with events for the Residents as well as mowing, weeding, and mulching the common areas of the garden.
For more information contact Sarah Bohl at sarahtrelle(at)gmail(dot)com
04 Tuesday Apr 2017
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Gardening at the old Soldiers’ Home.
Love to garden and volunteer?
The Community-Resident Garden at the Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH) has garden space available!
The garden provides AFRH Residents and individuals from the surrounding neighborhoods an opportunity to garden, build friendships, and have fun. The Friends of the Soldiers Home manages the garden in partnership with the AFRH.
Joining the garden entails a volunteer commitment of four hours per month and annual dues of $25. Volunteer duties include mowing the common areas of the garden and helping Residents to plant and weed their gardens.
Community garden plots for new gardeners in 2017 are about 15 feet by 30 feet and are available for growing vegetables and flowers for family and friends (not for commercial use).
Come join us!
For more information contact Sarah Bohl at sarahtrelle(at)gmail(dot)com
31 Friday Jul 2015
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Tomatoes, beans, peanuts, eggplants, corn — these items from the Armed Forces Retirement Home-DC gardens are delicious and nutritious. Not every tomato is perfect, but they’re still tasty. Now in its fifth year, the gardening partnership of Home residents and volunteers from Friends of the Soldiers Home is the centerpiece for a relaxing time in a hectic city. Vegetables in more than 25 plots push through the long hot days of summer with the help of over 50 volunteers. Garden socials offer opportunities to serve beer and grilled food, and to swap tales. Residents bring their coolers filled with bubbly treats. Recent incessant rains has everything in the gardens spiraling skyward, including the weeds. Swallows nesting in Matthew’s new birdhouses flit above everyone’s heads, making tasty morsels of mosquitoes and other pesky garden critters. Michael, Enid, Casey and others carefully tend to Roger’s row of flowers. Kelly’s stewardship of the cut flower bed is rewarding us with yellows, purples, and reds. Good times are ahead too — the cool growing weather is just two months away.
Story and photos by Ken Rubotzky.
18 Thursday Jun 2015
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The second garden social for residents and volunteers in the green oasis of the Soldiers’ Home occurred last weekend. The socials occur once a month and often feature recently harvested crops. Hot temperatures threatened attendance but a constant breeze and the shade of big trees provided respite. A new activity of sketching and identifying common weeds became the focus of this social. 2015’s growing season has drawn in new faces, young and old.
(Catching up on the news.)
(Corn growing.)
(Kids dive in.)
(Relaxing under shady trees.)
12 Tuesday Aug 2014
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Armed Forces Retirement Home-DC gardeners recently got together with Friends of the Soldiers Home volunteers for a spectacular picnic. We had corn, cucumbers and ripened tomatoes grown through the Friends-AFRH garden project at the picnic tables. The event encouraged numerous new veteran faces to come down for the comfortable breeze and cold beverages. Gardening and non-gardening residents snatched spots with a neighborhood view under breezy trees in chairs and picnic tables. AFRH Garden Director Lori Thompson brought all the vital vittles and fire making to ensure a successful BBQ. Garden volunteers like Ellen Hughes helped with cooking, kindly purchased drinks and helped serve. The garden of AFRH resident Terry supplied all of the corn and then some. Terry has some popcorn on the way. Maybe we’ll have some homegrown, homemade popcorn at the next social! Story and photos by Ken Rubotzky.
14 Wednesday May 2014
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Story and photos by Ken Rubotzky
The Soldiers Home Garden Project, a partnership of Friends of the Soldiers Home and the Armed Forces Retirement Home, is off to a strong start. This spring the program has grown, with 45 community volunteers joining 15 veteran residents in tending plots on the lower grounds of the beautiful Soldiers Home campus. This is the third year of the program, which has spawned friendships and helped bring veterans back to gardening because they have helpers for some of the heavy lifting.
The 2014 growing season is off to a wet and muddy start. Deer fences are sprouting up, and discussions about tomato varieties are ensuing. Two rows of garden space are visible from Rock Creek Church Road and Park Place Northwest. They will be the source of many vegetables and fruits that make it to the homes of volunteers and residents, and possibly visitors, during the numerous upcoming events in 2014.
This year amaranth and echinacea have made it into the May planting. If you go all the way to the end of the B section, and talk to the perspiring owner of one of the last garden plots, you might fear for your life. He has excavated several deep pits and is excited about planting three sisters. The sisters are companion plants, of course — beans, melons and corn.
Several social events, some more fun than work and others more work than fun, transpired between bouts of April showers. The first event involved working out the kinks of equipment repair and fencing. Another was a meeting of minds of old gardeners. The third involved cleanup, and the most recent session was an informal social where new pairings of volunteers and residents put down some roots. Events are planned for each month while the weeds and deer attempt to secure their share of the gardens.
It should be a good season.
20 Thursday Mar 2014
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A beautiful spring day… time to think about…. the third annual Friends of the Soldiers Home and Armed Forces Retirement Home Garden Project!
You can get your own garden plot on the beautiful, historic grounds of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C. In return, you help residents with their gardens, assist with general upkeep of the growing area or volunteer at other Friends of the Soldiers Home and Armed Forces Retirement Home programs.
Please contact Friends Garden Coordinator Ken Rubotzky at ken.rubo (at) gmail (dot) com if you are interested in participating.
Volunteers and residents have loved this program. The Washington Post Magazine article from one year ago documented some lasting friendships that resulted. See: http://wapo.st/1l6TXXk
New volunteers must complete two orientations before they participate. The first meeting is a two-hour session on general information about volunteering at the Home. The second meeting is 1.5-hour discussion on use of the garden space.
Upcoming options for the general volunteer meeting are this coming Saturday, March 22, from 1-3 p.m.; Friday, March 28, 1-3 p.m.; Friday, April 18, 1-3 p.m.; or Saturday, April 19, 9-11 a.m.
The second meeting will be held at the garden plots on campus. The options are: Sunday, March 30, 3:30-5 p.m.; Sunday, April 6, 1:30-3 p.m.; or Tuesday, April 8, 6:30-8 p.m.
We also ask that participants get on our Friends of the Soldiers Home volunteer e-mail list to hear about opportunities. People can get on the list by contacting Volunteer Coordinator Lori Lincoln at volunteerfriendsofsoldiers (at) mail (dot) com
19 Wednesday Jun 2013
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by Kendall Bentz
Row of squash in the garden of Mr. James — photo by Kendall Bentz.
The second season of community gardening is in full swing at the Armed Forces Retirement Home. Friends of the Soldiers Home volunteers have been hard at work tending to their garden plots and assisting AFRH residents in a variety of ways – from the planting and upkeep of residents’ plots to planting and maintaining an impressive, colorful flowerbed, to general upkeep of the garden area.
My wife, Carrie, and I assist resident Jessie James, along with volunteers Susan Webb and Kellie and Conrad Williams.
This is my second year working alongside Mr. James, and while I’ve learned a lot, I still find myself struggling to keep pace with him. He typically beats me out to the garden on Saturday mornings and is well at work by the time I arrive. He’s an octogenarian with high octane in his tank!
On a cool Saturday morning in early May, Mr. James and I prepped the ground for planting. He tilled the plot twice to soften up the ground and then started marking out the rows.
Mr. James tilling the garden in preparation of planting — photo by Kendall Bentz.
line and photo credits go to Kendall Bentz
20 Wednesday Mar 2013
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Volunteers and AFRH residents preparing the garden plots for planting, Spring 2012.
Friends of the Soldiers Home is happy to announce the second season of community gardening at the Armed Forces Retirement Home!
Friends volunteers have an opportunity to garden plots of their own in exchange for assisting resident gardeners with their plots.
In the first year of this wonderful program we saw more veterans choosing to have gardens at the Home than at any time in several years. Friendships formed, and deepened, among veterans and community volunteers. We are so excited about what the second season will bring!
Whether you would be new to the program or returning from last year, you must express an interest by e-mailing Carrie Green by no later than Wednesday, March 27 at gardenerofsoldiers @ gmail.com Carrie is the coordinator of the garden project for Friends of the Soldiers Home.
The number of community volunteers we can accommodate in this program is tied to the number of residents who sign up to participate. So space is limited. We don’t expect to have room for everyone who expresses an interest, but we will do our very best to work with the Home to fit in as many people as possible.
Carrie will notify community members if there is space for them on April 1. Friends requests a $20 donation per community member who gardens. Volunteers must be willing to undergo background checks by the Armed Forces Retirement Home staff.
New garden volunteers will need to attend one of two orientation meetings with the Home’s volunteer coordinator, either on Friday, April 5th, from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., or Saturday, April 6th, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
New volunteers also need to attend an orientation with the Home’s garden coordinator on Sunday, April 7th at 4 p.m.
Gardener volunteers returning from last year don’t need to attend the session with the volunteer coordinator, but they must meet with the garden coordinator on Wednesday, April 3, at 7 p.m.Questions? Contact Carrie Green at the address above.
Friends of the Soldiers Home 