The Keeseville Community Garden was established in 2021 by AdkAction’s Tom Boothe Adirondack Intern, Kim Gonzales, to create a welcoming space where residents could learn to grow food, participate in educational workshops, and experience gardening in a shared, low-risk environment. Located in downtown Keeseville, the garden remains uniquely accessible to residents and organizations that may not otherwise have space to grow food. Over the past several years, the garden has provided food, joy, and community connection while fulfilling its founding mission as a community learning space.

Today, Keeseville has additional resources supporting both local food access and hands-on gardening education, including Sand River Community Farm, Hope Kitchen, the Keeseville Grocery, and the Keeseville Free Library. With these resources in place and community needs evolving, AdkAction began seeking a new local leader for the Keeseville Community Garden.

We are grateful to share that the Ausable Valley Grange #973 has stepped up to steward the community garden into its next chapter. The AV Grange is a fraternal organization cultivating community through service, art, and education as well as an accessible space for public and private gatherings and events. Click here to learn more about their work.

Every AdkAction project follows a thoughtful pathway, and at each stage of the project’s lifecycle, from discovery to testing and investing, the team pauses to define what’s next. The most successful projects are designed to move beyond AdkAction, or “graduate,” as we like to say. This stage of graduation allows proven solutions and projects to continue growing through community leadership.

The garden began as a joint community effort, from the land it sits on, offered generously by Barb Davidosn, to the water that sustains the plants shared by the neighboring Adirondack Hardware store, and we are so glad to see that the garden will continue in that same spirit, stewarded by the volunteers at the local Grange. Seeing the garden embraced and carried forward by local leaders is exactly the kind of community momentum AdkAction strives to build, and we look forward to watching it flourish this season and in years to come.

If you would like to get involved with the garden as a volunteer, or if you would like to tend your own garden bed, you can reach out directly to Grange at [email protected].