Community Garden
Green Meadows provides public access community gardening in 4’ x 8’ raised beds for local residents and helps gardeners expand their knowledge of gardening using organic horticultural practices. We try to provide educational classes several times during the year and we also provide individual assistance when gardeners ask for help. The expansive garden is surrounded on three sides by flowering plants that are pollinator friendly as pollinators are essential to the production of vegetables and fruits.
The community garden not only provides a place to grow healthy vegetables but also it is a place to make new friends, enjoy nature , and get great exercise in the fresh air and sunshine. Our gardeners join together on various workdays throughout the year to keep the garden looking its best and at the end of each workday, we enjoy fresh fruit and snacks along with our new friends. We have several picnic tables and benches when we need to relax or take a water break under the pecan tree that provides much needed shade on a hot summer day. This garden has grown into a wonderful space full of great gardeners.
If you are interested in leasing a raised bed or a group tour of the garden or maybe you think you might like to garden with us, please email us at: greenmeadowscg@gmail.com.
Visit the Community Garden website where you can find articles written by some of our gardeners on how to grow and care for various vegetables.
House & Historical Garden
The “Bullard” farmhouse is being restored to its condition in the late 1830’s. The building additions from the 1920’s and later have been removed, including the dormer windows and the big porch. The interior is also being restored, including identification of historical architectural features and construction techniques.
The Historical Garden around the old farmhouse will feature shrubs and plantings common to the area during the late 19th century. Some original plantings have been removed and stored elsewhere temporarily on the site by our gardeners. A new garden layout around the house will feature genuine “Period” plants. This Historical Garden at Green Meadows Preserve is already a “Designated Restoration Project” of the Georgia Native Plant Society.
Our hope is that someday many features inside and outside the house will be marked with QR codes like we use in the gardens. Touring groups’ cell phones will be able to scan the code and jump to descriptions and pictures explaining each feature.
Master Gardeners
Master Gardener Volunteers of Cobb County hosts garden tours, public service projects, and classes on horticulture, vegetable gardening, and Cherokee history. They are an important part of Green Meadows Preserve, including the projects above. For information about Master Gardener Volunteers, visit cobbmastergardeners.com
Honeybees
Bees are key to enhanced crop pollination and yields. More than 2/3 of our food supply depends on pollinators like honeybees to reach maturity; 1/3 being foods we eat and 1/3 plants that feed food animals like livestock. Commercial farmers readily pay pollination companies to truck-in hundreds of temporary hives during pollination seasons, helping to ensure optimum production.
At Green Meadows, Cobb Master Gardeners are actively working with plants in the Community Garden, the Period House Garden, and the Cherokee Garden, which all benefit from our honeybee pollination.
In recent years, we have seen severe nationwide attrition of bee colonies. By some reporting more than half of the hives are being lost. Causes and correction are still unknown. In a recent year we lost four out of five of our Green Meadows hives to parasites. Keeping Cobb bee colonies going is a small, but useful backstop to this loss. We just might have the strain with the key genetic characteristics needed to fix it.
