Victory Garden
As part of the Garden Center’s educational prong of its mission statement and in keeping with our concept of having a “Test Garden” in plot one of the Trial Gardens, a Victory Garden was planted in 2025 and again in 2026. The garden will demonstrate the feasibility of growing vegetables along with annuals and herbs in a limited space to create an attractive and inviting garden that would be welcome in any landscape.
Victory Garden: Follow this garden project from planting through the harvest. Learn about various growing techniques, trellising methods, appropriate plants for a small space, succession planting, harvesting, and more.
Ask Dr. Vege – Identify and learn about garden pests and diseases that can affect your veggies and recommended pest control options and other remedies:
Who’s Your Buddy? – Learn about companion planting
Build it and They Will Come
Victory Garden Chair, Alaine Bush, Katherine Paquette, and Toni Gibson have developed and are sharing some of their tried-and-true recipes with followers of the Victory Garden project. Enjoy!
The garden was transformed in the spring of 2025 from a perennial test garden into a Victory Garden, combining vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers into a practical, space-conscious design by Victory Garden Chair and Advanced Master Gardener, Alaine Bush, partnered by Katherine Paquette. Alaine’s garden plan cleverly made the best use of this relatively small area using vertical and other space-saving planting techniques along with demonstrating the method of succession planting.
The garden is entering year two in 2026 with different plantings of vegetables, herbs, annuals, etc. This will provide new learning experiences and growing techniques to follow. Alaine will once again be assisted by Katherine Paquette, and a new member on the team, Toni Gibson.
Garden Center members can keep updated on the victory garden through our newsletters, which will contain a series of educational articles by our Victory Garden Chair, Alaine Bush, following her victory garden projects from seed planting through to the harvest. Also, on this web page you can read informative articles on lessons learned and techniques used in growing various crops of vegetables, pest problems, harvest results, recipes, and more.
Crop rotation is a major factor in successful vegetable gardening, so the 2026 Victory Garden will be filled with an all-new cast of vegetable characters. Succession planting will be accomplished by growing cabbage, cauliflower and kale, ready for harvest by mid-summer. As spring evolves into summer, sweet corn and sunflowers will be added as well as the root vegetables, beets and carrots. Companion planting will attract the ‘good bugs’ who eat the ‘bad bugs’ to the garden. Marigolds, sweet alyssum, yarrow and numerous herbs will be interspersed among the vegetables to attract ladybugs, lacewings and other beneficial insects, eliminating the need for pesticides.
Culture Guide 2026:
The 2025 Victory Garden utilized succession planting, vertical growing and creative staking methods to maximize harvest in the 12-foot by 24-foot garden. These methods ensured that the garden was a bountiful success. 40 pounds of tomatoes were harvested along with 610 peppers, bags of lettuces and Swiss chard, bunches of radishes and numerous bouquets of fresh herbs.
