The Gardens
Stay tuned for Spring Hours!
The Forest Garden Farmstand
on Whiskeag Rd in Bath near the Sewall Woods Trailhead
Meet your Gardener: Claire Garner
Claire has a bachelor's in Ecological Agriculture from the University of Vermont. She is a Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, a founding member of Centers for Energetic Healing (CFEH) (and as it happens The Forest Garden Farmstand is located at the CFEH Home Office), and an Intuitive Emotional Healing Guide. With all of those interests and the life experiences they bring, you can imagine that Claire has a number of incredible projects she invests her time in.
One of those projects is tending her gardens that supply The Forest Garden Farmstand.
Through The Forest Garden Farmstand, Claire lovingly offers pesticide-free, hand-tended, high quality produce to the people of Bath each week.
Each week Claire posts all the items available in the farmstand that week on The Forest Garden's Instagram page. Then you are invited to place an order ahead of time to pick up during farmstand hours, or just swing by and see what looks good!
All proceeds from the farmstand go to expanding the garden and all of Claire's gardening offerings at The Forest Garden.
The Forest Garden
The Forest Garden is Claire's home garden, located at the Centers for Energetic Healing Home Office. Claire established this space as a teaching garden, devoted to helping people learn to grow their own food, compost, and tend the earth.
She named it The Forest Garden, because it's nestled right in the middle of a magical four acre maple and oak forest.
The Forest Garden currently consists of 18 raised beds for mixed veggie and herb production, as well as wildflower beds, and more and more varieties of fruit all the time. Right now Claire's fruit varieties are low bush blueberries, high bush blueberries, rhubarb, and raspberries.
It's here at The Forest Garden where all of Claire's garden workshops and garden meetups take place. If you want to learn to compost, start your own seeds, or grow your own food, this is where you'll be learning.
The Row Crop Garden
In 2022, Claire was offered the use of some land owned by an elderly local who wanted her garden space put to good use. It measures roughly 50ft x 100ft, with almost half of it already fenced in with deer fencing. Claire calls this plot
The Row Crop Garden.
As you can image, this large space allows her to grow a lot more food than the small collection of raised beds at The Forest Garden. This enables her to grow larges amounts of storage crops like potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, cabbages, winter squash, etc.
So when you purchase produce from The Forest Garden Farmstand, you're actually buying produce that comes from both gardens.
Claire's Practices
Claire does not use any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. She is focused on creating food ecosystems that balance themselves, which means she doesn't spray, she weeds by hand instead of with a tractor, and she selects plants that encourage the attraction of beneficial insects. Claire builds the soil and tils as little as possible, she uses mulch when appropriate, and she incorporates as many flowers and herbs as possible into her vegetable production. Finally Claire uses fabric row cover to protect susceptible crops from pests when needed, and augments the soil with compost, much of which she makes on site.
Quality is really important to Claire, as is creating food ecosystems that nourish the soil and the surrounding ecosystem. So she strives to use gardening practices that leave a light footprint and encourage biodiversity. The result is beautiful, integrated food landscapes that feel like art installations while at the same time producing really nourishing, high quality food to feed the community.