Nathaniel Smith, Jamal Grant and Robert Felter, students in KLF’s construction-training program, prepare a raised garden bed they constructed.
Flenniken Landing residents excitedly greeted construction trainees from the Knoxville Leadership Foundation Wednesday morning.
The students installed two raised garden beds they’d constructed. The event was rained out Monday, so the students built the frames at an indoor KLF facility. Everyone was eager to see the project take the next step of attaching the beds to posts and filling them with soil.
Stanley’s Greenhouse donated vegetable plants and seeds. Flenniken Landing residents have formed a garden club, which will create a schedule for looking after the beds. All of the 48 residents, including five veterans, have volunteered to help.
The plants will be started in one bed and the seeds in another.
“Flenniken Landing is our permanent supportive housing for the formerly homeless,” said Alexa Goddard, communications specialist for KLF. “So the beds are going to be a blessing just as kind of therapeutic services.
“A lot of our residents come from broken families, hard situations, so the goal is to have something tangible that they can nurture and care for as they’re working on nurturing and caring for their personal relationships.”
