From the Kanuga Produce Garden to Yours: Tips for Happy Gardening
04.23.2020 - Camps & Outdoor Education, Kanuga Stories

Gardening is an incredibly rewarding way to spend your extra time at home, stay active, and reap the benefits of home-grown produce. From a five-gallon bucket container garden to a tilled patch in the backyard, here are a few tips on kitchen gardening straight from Kanuga’s own Foster Educational Garden:
Happy gardening!
At Kanuga, we treasure God’s gift of creation and commit to using and teaching sustainable models that have the least impact on our land and resources.
Kanuga’s Foster Educational Garden (FEC), located on the Bob Campbell Youth Campus (Camp Bob at Kanuga), is a small-plot educational kitchen garden devoted to planting and producing a variety of fresh produce for the enjoyment of Kanuga’s own guests and campers. Once a week during summer, Kanuga’s produce is also a popular item at the GP-only farmers market in Hendersonville. It is customary, as well, for some of the season’s bounty to be shared with the Hendersonville Rescue Mission.
The organic garden concept came to life in 2007, and was named for Robert “Bob” Foster (September 24, 1926-May 16, 2015), a Charleston native and former dean at the University of South Carolina School of Law in Columbia, who had a passion for environmental issues as well as Camp Bob and MTOS. Foster grew up spending summers at Kanuga and was an active member of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Columbia. Learn more about Bob’s life here.
Within its one-acre site, FEC includes a greenhouse, fruit trees, gazebo, garden shed, and an educational garden utilized by Mountain Trail Outdoor School (MTOS), Camp Bob, and the guest period program. Summer is the primary growing season, when about 1,000 pounds of produce are harvested each year.
This year, Kanuga is growing nasturtiums, squash, zinnias, sunflowers, garlic, herbs, onion, watermelon, peppers, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, beets, cucumbers, and okra.