TAUNY Garden Tour at Jane Desotelle's "Plattsburgh Botanical Sanctuary," July 28th

Join TAUNY in Plattsburgh, NY for the next Grow and Tell Project garden tour of the season! The Grow and Tell Project is a 2021 partnership between TAUNY and littleGrasse Community Farm (Canton, NY), highlighting the local food and food traditions that help sustain us, through a series of garden tours, kitchen demonstrations, video and digital features, and more. The second in the summer series, this garden tour brings us to Jane Desotelle's "Plattsburgh Botanical Sanctuary'' (Plattsburgh, NY), where Jane will show visitors the garden and share stories of how the things she grows and forages both connect her to her heritage and offer tasty flavors and medicinal properties for living a healthful and delicious life.

From foraging for medicinal plants as a child with her grandmother, to establishing herself as an herbalist and developing her botanical sanctuary in the heart of downtown Plattsburgh, Jane, a TAUNY North Country Living Traditions Award recipient, has long been carrying on her own family and food traditions, as well as the long-standing tradition of herbalism, through the plants she cultivates and protects. As part of the Grow and Tell program series exploring how people grow food connecting to their own and regional traditions, this tour will highlight some of the ways it figures into food and health traditions to think about food as medicine. Take a walk with Jane to learn more about how she gained her herbal knowledge and how she uses it to grow, process, and share the bounty through teas, jellies, essential oils, and more. The tour will include hands-on and sampling opportunities. Jane will also provide a list of all the plants at the sanctuary with their botanical names for all participants.

There is a cost of $25 per person for this event. There will be two times available for this tour: 10-11:30am and 1-2:30pm. Spots are limited, and registration (specifying which time slot) is required for this event at tauny.org/shop. Please plan to dress comfortably for walking in the garden. (In case of heavy weather, there is a tentative rain date of August 4th.)

In August through October, the Grow and Tell Project will host additional garden tours with Jean Williams (Blue Mountain Lake, NY) and littleGrasse Community Farm on themes of the traditional arts of self-sufficiency and subsistence gardening and seed-saving. All tours have limited spots, and registration is required. Learn more about the project and program series at tauny.org or contact [email protected] for more information or to get involved.

The Grow and Tell Project, part of TAUNY's new Folk to Table initiative, is a 2021 partnership between TAUNY and littleGrasse Community Farm. Additional partners in the project include GardenShare (Canton, NY) as well as varied home cooks and gardeners from around the region. The Grow and Tell Project is made possible by a grant from the Cloudsplitter Foundation.

The TAUNY Center is located at 53 Main Street, Downtown Canton, NY. TAUNY, Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people understand and appreciate the folk traditions and local culture of everyday life-present and past-in the North Country. To do so, TAUNY seeks to research and preserve a record of diverse groups, customs and traditions; to recognize and empower traditional arts and artists; to identify and promote regional identity; and to provide opportunities for people of all ages to learn about folklore and culture. More information is available at tauny.org.