McCORDSVILLE – A table just inside the entrance of the Hancock Wellness Center in McCordsville is typically overflowing with fresh vegetables, which are free for the taking.
Michelle Graves, the McCordsville center’s resident dietitian and nutritionist, plucks the produce from a garden she planted outside the wellness center this spring.
With the help of a few Hancock County Master Gardeners, she planted a wide variety of produce in four 4-by-8-foot raised beds on the south side of the center.
She’s using the colorful display of produce to teach wellness center members all about nutrition and the benefits of eating healthy foods.
“As a dietitian one of the biggest things I’ve wanted to do is bring awareness to nutrition and create an educational garden to help with that,” she said.
“Having the garden helps teach not only how important food and nutrition is for the body but that food can be used as medicine,” said Graves, a certified health and wellness coach. “Nutrition is just so important for energy levels, weight management, disease prevention and disease management, and it can even affect your mood. The list goes on and on about what food and nutrition can do.”
At the wellness center, Graves engages members in conversation about how fresh, colorful produce provides many more benefits than just a tasty meal.
“We want to teach the importance of getting a minimum of five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, and to assure you’re getting a variety of colors with those fruits and vegetables,” she said. “It’s important to make your plate look like a rainbow, with lots of dark greens, blues, oranges, reds and purples – because each of of those colors provides different nutrition that your body needs.”
Graves said the wellness center’s garden currently yields zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, tomatoes and a variety of peppers, as well as several herbs including basil, thyme, rosemary and oregano.
“Our yellow squash and peas are dying out, so we’re looking into replacing them with fall-friendly plants like lettuce, spinach, beets, turnips and radishes. We just haven’t picked what we’re doing yet,” she said.
Graves created the garden as her special project for a career advancement program offered to all wellness center employees, but she said it was a labor of love.
The whole McCordsville wellness center staff chipped in one day by helping build the raised garden beds and filling them with dirt.
“That was a big job so we did it during one of our staff meetings one day,” she said.
Graves is the primary person weeding and watering the garden, although she gets some help from co-workers and volunteers from Hancock County Master Gardeners.
“They’ve provided guidance throughout this whole process,” she said. “They formed a committee within their group for me to reach out for advice on what to grow and things like that.”
The gardens have also helped her identify squash bores which are wreaking havoc on the wellness center’s squash plants.
Graves can’t say how much produce has sprung forth since the garden beds were planted in mid-May, but it’s been enough to provide plenty of food for members to take home over the past several weeks.
“We’ve even had some people bringing in their own produce to share. One person commented that it’s like a farmers market in here,” she said.
When Anita Wilson saw the table of colorful produce at the wellness center, she brought an armload of sweet corn from her family farm in Peru to add to the mix.
“Last year I just gave it to the employees, but this year I brought enough to share,” said Wilson, who lives just outside McCordsville.
She said she’s happy to share her bounty with fellow wellness center members, and even took some zucchini home for herself.
“If you have plenty I see no reason not to share,” said Wilson, who typically brings back a car full of corn to share every time she visits Peru.
Graves hopes to see the community garden continue and hopes to offer cooking demonstrations using the fresh herbs and produce some day.
“For now I’ve put out recipes and things like that for members to try with their produce,” she said. “I hope to come up with other ideas of how we can use the garden to educate more in the future.”
She hopes the free produce giveaway will help all members realize that a dietitian is at their disposal at the wellness center to answer questions about how diet and nutrition play a vital role in their overall wellness.
Graves said each of the three Hancock County Wellness Centers in the county have a dietitian on staff willing to do the same.
“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback on the garden so far, which has been wonderful. There’s been a lot of comments about how beautiful the garden looks and how this is such a neat thing to do,” said Graves, who finds that free produce doesn’t last long once it’s set out near the front entrance.
“We try to put it out at different times of the day so it’s available to different people,” she said.
Rhonda Eaton hadn’t heard of the free produce giveaway until chatting with some friends after a Zumba class at the wellness center Monday afternoon, but she was excited to hear that it was available for all to enjoy.
“That can be such a blessing to so many, especially with the cost of healthy food due to inflation these days,” she said.
