Kim Normand: Grace in the garden

It has been eight years since the Shared Harvest Garden blossomed into existence at the corner of Foster Avenue and 10th Street in Coeur d’Alene.

The three lots, once vacant and overgrown, are now a series of thriving garden plots, picnic tables and park benches.

But it’s more than a garden.

It brings neighbors together, provides nourishing food the gardeners share with food banks and soup kitchens, and it has created a green space where people learn about growing, composting and wise water usage.

Kim Normand, Shared Harvest Garden’s founder and coordinator, sat down with The Press to talk about the many facets of the garden.

“The garden is not about me. There are hundreds of volunteers. I always try to take a back seat,” Normand said. “Everyone gives, so I can never ever thank people enough for that. I couldn’t do this alone.”

• • •

What prompted you to start the garden?

I started it with a pumpkin seed. We wanted to have a contest in our neighborhood, the Garden District, and someone told me about the property that Marshall Mend had. I called him the next day, and he was so excited about it. He has been so supportive of our garden.

When we started it, we had to clean it up. I thought there would be six people there, and there were 70, from ages 72 to 4. So I knew there was a calling for it, and ever since, it’s just grown and bloomed bigger every year.

How many plots are there now?

We have 60 plots, and we have a very large garden, and we have a xeriscape. That’s a show garden, on the outside perimeter of the garden. It’s a drought-tolerant garden using grasses and flowers that are more water-sustainable.

What led you to envision the community garden?

I’ve been a gardener since I was five years old. I always had a passion for it, and this just exploded into something that was bigger than I could have anticipated. As I tell people, all the time, it’s not about growing the seeds and the plants. The seed is volunteers, and what we’ve accomplished just with community support and volunteers is unbelievable. We have, in the last eight years, collected over 50,090 pounds of produce, and that is done through Roots Local Foodshare, an offset of Kootenai Environmental Alliance. Shared Harvest is the hub where they collect all their food, on Wednesdays, from July until October. All our plot owners in the garden share their bounty with Roots Local Foodshare.

I’ve told people, if you’re not wanting to share your food, then this might not be your type of community garden, but this is a sharing garden.

It was the first, eight years ago, in the Northwest. There are a lot of peace farms and community gardens all over, but this one was the first to do this.

All the community gardens in Coeur d’Alene now bring their produce down to Shared Harvest so we’ve combined together, and they feel good about it, and so do we.

We’ll have volunteers who have never, ever given anything before, and they’re so excited about it. I tell them, there are a lot of things happening out there in the world, but if we can start in our backyards, it’s a ripple effect, and people just do a better job.

Are there any interesting stories from the garden?

Every plot has a story, every individual has a story, and for some reason, I’m the mama of the garden, and I will usually hear their stories that I keep to myself. It might be something they don’t want shared. Some people are going through divorces and they want a healing garden.

I had one little boy helping me, and he was working, and I said ‘Why aren’t you playing with the other kids?’ And he said, ‘Because I really want to help here. I feel like I’m doing something good.’ And that just took me back, because he gets it. You can see the spark in him, because it is only a community garden.

I never go down there in a bad mood because I want the energy to be really positive.

A lot of people will come down and just have lunch there. The garden is open to people having lunch. We ask that people don’t pick from the garden plots, but they can certainly come down and walk through the garden, and take a look at it.

What are some things other than gardening that happen in the garden?

In the fall, we end our season with a children’s play that we’ve done for three years now. One of our board members — her name is Jessica Levy — writes and directs the play. It’s usually a musical/play, and these kids practice. And we’ll have over 100 people down there. It’s a free play.

I think one of my favorite things to do is put people in the right places for what they can contribute to the garden. That’s probably my gift to the garden, finding their value and putting them in the right spot.

I have a wonderful board of individuals who have been on the board for eight years. They’re smart people. They come with their computers. Everything we did in the garden, we put thought into — from our logo to our name, from the design of the garden. We put a lot of thought into it. We meet once a month.

Who pays for the garden?

We put on a fundraiser, Dinner Under the Stars, that supports our garden, on top of two grants we get from Windermere and the Coeur d’Alene Garden Club. Through that process, it keeps our garden going. We also have a greenhouse we work, at the Jewett House, where we grow all our starts for the garden and we share with the plot owners.

This is a nonprofit. No one gets paid.

Then, each plot owner pays $25 for their plot, and that money, in turn, goes back into the garden. What it does is, it invests in their garden, and they can plant whatever they want. We want them to share whatever they like to eat. Then, I always tell them, if they don’t have a lot to give, if they have an uncle that has a pear tree and they want to share something from their backyard, they can do that too. In turn, we get a lot more people dropping produce off that aren’t even involved in the garden. They just have extra bounty at home.

What do you do with all that produce?

We share with 15 different food assistance facilities. Two years ago, we started having those assistance facilities come down and pick up their produce. And also having our plot owners come down and see the people picking it up. Because it is a circle. They’re picking it up. They’re seeing where it’s coming from, that it’s not just coming in a box. They’re seeing that people are actually growing this produce for them. We want them to appreciate it, and we don’t want it to go to waste.

Our impact on the world, our footprint, is very small. The Roots Local Foodshare, we bike and cart to the farmer’s market and pick up the produce, and we try to use all recycled materials down at the garden as much as we can.

Do you think the garden will continue to bloom with volunteers and produce?

You’d think that after eight years, it would slow down. But it hasn’t. It’s only gotten bigger. We’ve mentored other gardens up in Bonners Ferry, Pinehurst, Coeur d’Alene, Spokane, and just given them our way of doing things, because we’ve got it down to a fine-tuned system.

This is a job I do all year round. It’s not just a seasonal job. There are a lot of underlying things that are being done all year long.

Do you have another career?

I just retired with my husband. I’ve been a floral designer for over 30 years, in the business and then, in my home. And then I was an orthodontic assistant for over 10 years.

What do you do when you’re not in the garden?

My husband and I are involved with Junk on Fourth Street. We are avid collectors. We like to repurpose and upcycle furniture, and then we also own Coeur d’Alene Longboards, our private skateboard company. My husband makes the longboards. He uses old wooden water skis and he also makes shorter bamboo longboards. He sells through Junk.

We just bought a little vintage 10-foot trailer so we can go camping and junking. That’s our big dream.

But my husband and I say this all the time, this has been the best eight years of our lives in Coeur d’Alene, because of this garden. It has brought people into our lives. Our lives have blossomed because of the garden, even though we work very hard at it. It’s an act of love.