Fauquier Hospital Builds Culinary and Healing Garden

Construction started Wednesday on Fauquier Hospital’s Culinary and Healing Garden. It will be installed adjacent to the Bistro patio and is designed to be a working kitchen garden. It will provide a source of organic, locally grown food for the Bistro. It will also be a teaching tool for learning about healthy food and where it comes from, and a place where patients, staff and visitors can sit and contemplate or putter to relieve stress. Installation should be completed by Friday.

The idea for the garden grew out of the “Green and Growing” program, a collaboration of Nutrition and Food Services, the FH Wellness Center, and FH Foundation in consultation with area youth groups, schools, local businesses, physicians and community organizations. The garden concept was unanimously approved by the Architecture and Interior Design Committee. Construction is being overseen by Facilities.

Support for the garden comes from Fauquier Health and community donors and volunteers. Once in, the garden will be overseen and maintained primarily by volunteers, most notably Warrenton resident Judy Roper, who stepped forward to be the garden coordinator. She will create the planting plan; direct planting and harvesting, and lead volunteers.

Other contributors and donors include Gilliams Lumber, Rankins Hardware, Providence Landscaping, Stuart A. Stanley Company, Wholesale Wood Products (Calverton), Boxwood Montessori, Anne Hall of Long and Foster, and others. Area gardeners and farmers have pledged to donate plants and seeds.

Kirsten Dueck, development officer for the Fauquier Health Foundation, said, “one of the most exciting parts has been the way people who had not previously been actively involved with the hospital got excited about it and came together to make it happen.”

Dr. Joshua Jakum, Dr. and Mrs. Robert Dart, and Doug Larson have been great champions for the garden, as have Foundation board members Anne Hall and Karen Wachtmeister, Town Councilman Yak Lubowsky and Fauquier County Supervisor Peter Schwartz. Staff who have helped out include Michael Kresse, Tracy Turman, Zach Erickson, Aren Dodge, Elizabeth Henrickson and Kirsten Dueck.