United Way Day of Caring

Hi all,

Yesterday was the 2023 United Way Day of Caring and we had nearly 40 people from two areas of UVA volunteer from 9-12. Again, it was a beautiful weather day. Just amazing how this happens on this special volunteer day year after year.

One team was led by Rose Oliveira-Abbey and came from the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. The second team was lead by Tim Robinson with UVA’s Communications team. It was just awesome to work with them and I hope that they will come back to the garden again.

When you next come to the garden take a walk around and admire all the work that got done!

A few highlights:

The shed has been thoroughly organized

Two new vegetable planting stands have been assembled

The hoop house was thoroughly cleaned, old insulation was removed, and the bed space had compost added and was planted. The bed space around it was weeded.

A new umbrella was set out (though I’d like to figure out how to increase the height). Help?

A new picnic table was installed with a concrete footer.

The poison ivy by the front corner was cut off the fence and removed. There was a lot of it and we had a volunteer (Jonelle) who wasn’t allergic! Amazing.

Huge amounts of vines were cut off the fence and removed. There is more to be done, but it was a great start.

The overgrown compost area was cleaned and is now usable. Feel free to add it to your plots. Please keep it clean.

Overgrown areas were trimmed, including trimming around all the garden beds.

Trash and broken bits were removed.

And more! Too much to list. What a wonderful day. I would like to give a special shout out to John and Mac, both of whom showed up for hours, worked hard and supervised volunteers. I would also like to recognize Kim, who made sure that the broken bits and trash that were moved to the curb were quickly removed. It takes a crew of people to keep this many volunteers working well and I’m grateful to all those who were able to come.