KCCG Hosts Luncheon To Honor Volunteers
On November 14th, KCCG hosted our annual Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon to honor our recurring volunteers who play a huge role in helping us provide affordable, nutritious food to Kansas City.
These volunteers do everything from planting seeds for our plant sales, to packing seeds, to maintaining our Beanstalk Children's Garden, to planting sweet potato slips, and much more!
This year, we had a "Thanksgiving" theme with a turkey lunch, which was appropriate because we are so thankful for all they do.
The 2024 "Volunteer of the Year" award was presented to Anne Brock. Anne spends many hours each year helping to package seeds, start transplants and help with many (many) tasks in the KCCG greenhouses. She always has a smile on her face and is a joy to be around!
Every year, we have new volunteers who come in and quickly become a vital member of the volunteer community. This year, we presented "Rookie of the Year" awards to Chris Otto and Barbara Dietz, who hit the ground running from day one and were reliable and brought positive energy to the community.
Thanks to all our volunteers who made the 2024 gardening season another successful year!
Volunteer of the Year - Anne Brock
Co-Rookie of the Year - Chris Otto
Co-Rookie of the Year - Barbara Dietz
Garden Clubs of America Presents Civic Improvement Commendation Award To KCCG Volunteer Roger Shelton
On November 2nd, the Westport Garden Club presented long time KCCG volunteer and gardener, Roger Shelton, with the Civic Improvement Commendation award from the Garden Clubs of America.
Roger was recognized for his volunteer work supporting and promoting community gardening and KCCG along with his personal gardening efforts growing food and donating to people in need in our community.
As a volunteer at KCCG, Roger volunteers twice a week for 6 months each year in preparation for the garden season. He works with our seed packing team to package vegetable seeds (each year we package about 50,000 seed packets) and also with our greenhouse team to plant seeds for vegetable transplants for the community. He personally starts over 20,000 plants each year for our greenhouse. We grow tomato, pepper, eggplant, sweet potato, cabbage, broccoli, collards, kale and lettuce plants that go out into the community projects each year.
Roger also grows vegetables to donate at food pantries and directly to families in need. He grows the vegetables and delivers them personally to the pantry sites and homes of families. This past year, at his 3 vegetable gardens locations, he grew and donated 2,037 pounds (over 1 ton) of fresh, healthy vegetables to people in our community. This is an incredible amount of food for one person to grow! (and donate)
In addition to all of these efforts, Roger is a wonderful advocate for vegetable gardening as a means to better nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. Everywhere he goes, he is encouraging people to try vegetable gardening and helping people to get started with having their own garden. He is a deserving and worthy candidate of this award.
It's Time To Plant Garlic!
It's officially to time to plant your garlic if you haven't done so. We recommend planting garlic from mid-November to mid-December in the Kansas City area.
To learn more about planting garlic, download our garlic guidesheet.
