If you find yourself sitting in the cafeteria at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital in Antigonish, you might want to take a look out the window.
There, you’ll find a new vegetable garden, built and cared for over the summer by the maintenance crew and is helping out a good cause.
It all started with the Assistant Manager of maintenance and operations Darrell Novak.
He tells our newsroom, for years he walked past what was an overgrown flower garden until one day he decided to do something with it.
“So, I called my carpenter on the radio, and I said, ‘could you come out and look at this and just what we can do?’ So, then I was talking to my garden guy and a few other people that were around and I said, ‘we’re going to clean this up, put all new lumber in it and we are going to plant something in it.'”
Novak adds, the group, including a carpenter, building maintenance worker and the assistant manager took turns on their free time looking after it.
They kept the soil, planted tomatoes, green peppers and herbs and it basically “grew itself”.
Creating a sense of accomplishment
Working on the garden Novak says, was something the crew could do together that wasn’t work related and was good for team building.
“This is all something that we can all get together with and do it and I don’t have to be your manager. I’m there as an equal to you guys and that we can work together.”
He adds, it gives them a sense of accomplishment and is good for morale.
Plans to expand
The garden is about 12 feet by four feet wide.
Novak tells us the Farmers’ Cooperative event wants to get involved if they expand – and that is exactly what they plan on doing.
He says the goal is to have more vegetables and people involved in the spring, instead of just the maintenance department.
“I think we should go even further. I know we have lots of areas at the hospital which would be great for growing and there’s lots of space that we can use, and if we got the volunteers to do it, then I think that’s great.”
They would plant tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers herbs and maybe something that is colorful to create a nice view for those working in offices.
Donating the food to a local organization
Novak says he also works as a volunteer firefighter.
With the department, they have a little canteen they use to raise funds then give to a local organization that really needs it.
In line with that same idea, he says, they decided to donate the food the garden grew to the Antigonish Community Fridge.
“I didn’t want the publicity for us to do it. I did it because it’s something we wanted to give out. We weren’t doing it for the notoriety. We were doing it because we wanted to.”
They will get out their shovels and start digging in again in May.
