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Buy Fresh Buy Local Hampton Roads - Your Fresh Food Guides
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Local Growers & Resources
Raising Backyard Chickens - News from the Coop
Plant A Row for the Hungry
New Kitchen Garden @ VBFM
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Useful Gardens Website

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Community Garden Startup Assistance! The Five Points Community Farm Market has received a $4,500 Grant to establish an Educational/Instructional Community Garden at Norview United Methodist Church. This Farm Market outreach project will help establish the grassroots processes, procedures and support system to help develop gardens throughout Norfolk. If your neighborhood is interested in starting a Community Garden, , contact the Market at farmmarket@verizon.net for information.

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Jump into spring with a terrific series of free gardening classes being offered by the VB Public Library at the Pungo-Blackwater library branch on Princess Anne Road (just south of Pungo).  From edible landscaping and fabulous container gardening ideas to discovering the spirit of your own landscape, these are fun talks full of gardening wisdom and advice.  For a complete class, list go to the Garden Events webpage. Sign up early, space is limited!

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 Beekeeping Class for Beginners -  The Beekeepers Guild of Southeast Virginia and the Wesleyan Beekeepers Association present a three day Short Course for Beginning Beekeepers.  The course will be held on three consecutive Saturday mornings, February 20, 27, and March 06, 2010 from 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Virginia.  The course consists of lectures and hands-on demonstrations. Details are online at the Beekeepers Guild website.

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The Useful Gardens Blog
And Gardening Discussion Group


Follow a dedicated food gardener's joys and woes and share your own comments at the Useful Gardens Blog,
www.usefulgardens.blogspot.com 

Have a guestion? Want to share an tip or solution? The
Useful Gardens Gardeners' Group at http://groups.google.com/group/usefulgardens is our forum for gardening ideas. Meet other area gardeners and brainstorm gardening solutions and ideas for creating beautiful and useful gardens.

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Buy Fresh Buy Local Hampton Roads will be at the Home & Garden Show!  This is prime time for buying winter vegetables and holiday feasting supplies at our local farm stands and farmers' markets, seafood is never better than this season and locally pastured beef, pork and poultry products are available year round.  You can find the shopping info you need in the BFBLHR Food Guides! For more info, visit the BFBLHR booth at the  Home & Garden Show Feb. 5 - 7 at the Virginia Beach Pavilion.

There is also useful info right here on the
Local Growers and Stands or Area Farmers Markets webpages.  Buying local means not only fresher food for you but it also means jobs, income and agricultural security for our community.

Winter is the time to rest and refresh yourself and your garden beds.  Check the The Garden Notebook page for winter ideas to keep your vegetable production going through the "off" season.

Gardening Classes continue around the area.  You won't want to miss the opportunity to learn new gardening tricks or information on wonderful new plants for your landscape so keep in touch with the Upcoming Garden Events
 page. If you know of an event we've missed, send it on to us!

This little website was created to help gardeners in the Hampton Roads, Virginia area share gardening tips, tricks and folklore, especially to help new gardeners get off to a good start.  There's a wonderful surge of interest in gardening as thoughtful folks design lives that are more environmentally and fiscally responsible and creative. We thought about calling this "recession gardening" - but, as any gardener knows, once you learn the delights of growing your own fruits and veggies, it won't matter whether you can afford high-priced items - no "store-bought" varieties will taste as good.