Hershey Community Garden Nearly Doubles In Size

If you build it, they will come. Isn’t that how the old saying goes? That seems to hold true with the expansion of the Hershey Community Garden. It opened in the spring of 2014 on the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center campus and was founded and built by Hershey Impact. This is comprised of The Hershey Company, Milton Hershey School, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Company (HE&R) and The M.S. Hershey Foundation. Immediately, the garden was embraced by the community and all 125 plots were quickly spoken for. Since then, there has been a consistent waiting list of anxious gardeners ready to cultivate.

Due to demand, we are proud to announce the garden has expanded to include an additional 100 plots, for a total of 225! This expansion would not have been made possible without the hard work of the Hershey Nursery, led by Dave Warren, Manager of Landscape and Inventory. His team has worked tirelessly for months to make this expanded vision a reality. We were able to catch up with Dave and pick his brain on what all went into building phase two. Here’s what we found out….

600+ Man hours by the Nursery team. This includes designing, project management, garden layout and everything in between.

5 Number of different crew members doing soil work, installing the path, shed and gazebo.

650 Approximate pieces of lumber to install the new garden boxes.

100 Number of new plots.

2017 Construction started in the spring of this year with water installation.

350 Cubic yards of soil mix (contains both sifted soil and compost) used to fill the new boxes.

100+ Tonnage of crushed stone to build new pathways.

200 Cubic yards (equal to two tractor trailer loads) of woodcarpet to fill areas between plots.

806 Feet of new linear fence installed.

50+ Number of volunteers who assembled boxes and spread woodcarpet.

1 Acreage of new plot.

5 Number of water hydrants throughout the garden for watering.

2018 Year garden will officially open!

To find out more information about the Hershey Community Garden, please visit the website.