Healthy Eating Encouraged

July 29, 2021

Memphis Garden Club Plants Teaching Garden for Diabetics

Sun Sugar tomatoes, sweet June bearing strawberries, Black Beauty eggplant, and aromatic herbs are among the fruits, herbs, and vegetables planted this summer by the Memphis Garden Club (MGC) to benefit diabetic clients in Memphis.

MGC collaborated with The University of Memphis’s Loewenberg College of Nursing (LCON) and Church Health, a non-profit health center, to design, plant, and maintain the Crosstown teaching garden for LCON and Church Health to offer therapeutic gardening lessons for diabetic clients to encourage healthy eating.

Diabetes is a big risk factor for heart disease. Dr. Mary Annapoorna, the LCON associate professor who secured the educational garden grant, said “The American Heart Association recommends thirty to forty-five minutes daily of gardening exercise for clients with diabetes and hypertension to improve health and prevent the risk of cardiovascular disease.”

The Crosstown teaching garden, combined with LCON educational materials and videos, is designed to encourage clients to raise fresh fruits and vegetables in home gardens to improve heart health through diet, social wellbeing, and physical exercise. The garden provides vegetables and herbs for clients to harvest and use in the Cook Well and Be Well nutrition cooking classes. 

A Memphis artisan designed the raised beds where MGC members planted fruits, vegetables, and herbs that grow easily in Memphis summers, including tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, two varieties of cucumber, eggplant, strawberries, three varieties of peppers, plus basil, chives, rosemary, sage, and marigolds for repelling insects. MGC gardeners will add seasonal crops to the garden in the fall.

 

 

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