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MORGAN — Kim Lambertz and her husband moved to this Northeast Kingdom town last fall, to a house on a hill overlooking Lake Seymour.
She envisioned growing a garden of herbs and maybe flowers, as she had for decades in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
But when Covid-19 hit, the 69-year-old retiree decided to expand her repertoire to vegetables — and she’s far from alone.
Aspiring and seasoned green thumbs across the nation are gearing up to garden as stay-home orders and social distancing force people to find things to do alone. The trend appears driven by concerns about access to food, with the coronavirus straining grocery stores and other parts of the supply chain.
“We’ve definitely seen renewed interest,” said Beret Halverson, who coordinates the University of Vermont Extension Master Gardener program.
The program runs a help-line for people with gardening questions, and Halverson said more people than usual have been calling in.
“People just talking about the need to have a source for local food,” she said, adding that many have been treating the idea like the “victory gardens” grown during both world wars.
Gardening has some particular benefits in a time of increased isolation. Researchers believe growing plants and spending time in green spaces improve mental health. And “it can kind of be a stealth exercise,” Halverson said.
“All that is weight-bearing activity, and that’s really great for people to stay healthy and fit,” she said. “If we’re stuck in our houses, people are going to be looking for different types of exercise than they’re used to.”
The uptick in interest has played out in the market.
Cynthia Burrington, owner of the Agway in Lyndonville, said the stock of some of her seeds and gardening supplies is dwindling because of an influx in customers, both old and new.
“It’s kind of a wake-up call,” Burrington said of the coronavirus pandemic. “Just that you may not have food, with the grocery stores getting hit so hard and availability.”
Gardener’s Supply Co. — whose online and catalog sales are bolstered by garden centers in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts — has been seeing a push from customers “for a ‘victory garden 2.0’ kind of thing,” said spokesperson Christie Kane. The garden centers are currently open for curbside pickup.
Locally, people have been buying soil and seed-starting kits, Kane said. Customers are ordering raised beds, too, and they’re doing so earlier and in greater numbers than expected. Because raised beds can last for years, a boost in their sales likely means consumers are either expanding or starting their gardens, she said.
Since Lambertz and her 76-year-old husband, Glenn, are both at high risk for the virus, they want to avoid trips to the grocery store by planting food at home. But Halverson, the master gardener, pointed out that people’s interest isn’t only in feeding themselves.
“Mostly, people were reaching out because they want to think about growing for others or donating to food banks, to food shelves,” she said.
“They’re thinking about what’s easy to grow, what would be good to donate and what would be accepted,” she continued, naming winter squash and sweet potatoes as two examples of nutrient-dense foods that store well.
That idea lines up with the work of Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Band of the Abenaki Nation. For the past few years, he’s been involved in an effort to preserve native heritage crops and build seed banks for tribal citizens. The seed banks are still running, he said, and about a dozen farmers associated with the Northeast Organic Farming Association have partnered with project organizers to help grow crops amid the crisis.
“I’m hoping that this will allow people to get more connected to the outdoors, to their food services, so that they can not only take care of themselves but they’re more connected to why we need to preserve this planet and the food that we grow,” he said. “With this Covid-19, the only thing we can do is be connected.”
A pivot to gardening may bring some challenges and questions of equity, though.
“There’s a lot of resources in getting a garden set up,” Halverson said. “If you’re somebody who’s working odd shifts or multiple jobs — or you have child care, lots of things going on in your life — it’s going to be a lot more difficult for you.”
Those difficulties, Stevens said, could be particularly pronounced in disadvantaged communities like his. He encouraged donations to the Abenaki people.
And those with the means to buy supplies might have a hard time because of shortages.
When Lambertz tried to order supplies online from Burpee Seeds, based in Pennsylvania, she was met with a message that the company had suspended new orders “due to unprecedented order volume and correspondence.”
She turned to Amazon but found the prices too high. She checked a dollar store and a hardware store, but seed packets were mostly gone at each. The majority of her growing history has been with live plants, but no one seemed to have any of those, either — until a clerk at one store recommended a small shop still selling them curbside.
Now armed with a tomato plant and a couple herbs, she plans to take care of her crops potted inside until the weather warms.
“One third of my thumb is green,” she said, explaining how she’s never considered herself an experienced gardener.
Might she as the months go on?
“Yeah,” she said, laughing. “I think I will.”
