Visitors Invited to Get Hands Dirty at TinkerGarden on Sept. 10
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Students in ASC’s CrEATe Lab Pro summer camp tend to the garden in the ART Yard in July 2022. The ART Yard, at ASC’s ARTSpace on Main, will be the site of TinkerGarden on Sept. 10, 2022.
Activities Include Composting How-To, Flower-Potting, and Bee-Hotel Making
The Arts & Science Center’s annual Tinkerfest is heading outside this year. The theme for the 2022 hands-on event is gardening, with a slate of horticulture-related activities planned.
Visitors can decorate and pot flowers to take home, at the Flower Garden station.
TinkerGarden is set for 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 10. Activities will be in the ART Yard at ASC’s facility The ARTSpace on Main, 623 S. Main St. in Pine Bluff.
All activities are free and open to the public.
TinkerGarden is sponsored by the Pine Bluff Area Community Foundation, an affiliate office of the Arkansas Community Foundation.
ASC is partnering with GSC Community Gardens in Pine Bluff for some of the activities.
Volunteers with GSC will teach visitors about composting and the process of creating fertile soil. GSC will also have its mobile farmers market van on site.
Shakeelah Rahmaan, ASC’s Education Programs Manager, is organizing the event.
“A couple of things I am extremely excited about are learning how to create my own soil and creating a bee hotel,” she said.
Bee hotels are little multi-compartment homes that encourage bees to nest in them. The hotels provide long-term accommodation where a bee lives from the time it is laid as an egg until it is ready to emerge as an adult.
“Bees are just very fascinating and important to the overall cycle of plants and agriculture,” Rahmaan said. “I think it is important to shine a spotlight on them.”
The other activity stations will include:
At the Rock Garden station, TinkerGarden visitors can paint and decorate stones to take home to use as decor in their home gardens.
Sensory Herb Garden: Visitors can use their senses to explore the smells, taste, and feel of different herbs used for cooking.
Rock Garden: Visitors can paint and decorate stones to take home to use as decor in their gardens.
Flower Garden: Visitors can decorate and pot flowers to take home.
The event makes use of the outdoor space behind The ARTSpace. Dubbed the ART Yard, the paved space features sculptures and a garden, and is frequently the site of events like ASC’s monthly Live@5 concert series. Herbs and produce from the garden have been used during ASC’s nutritious cooking class CrEATe Lab, and more gardening-related programs are in the works, Rahmaan said.
“We were very fortunate to receive a donation to help us create our garden in 2020,” she said, “and we want to share all that becomes of it with our community.”
Flowers from GSC Community Gardens in Pine Bluff are shown. Volunteers from GSC will be at TinkerGarden.
Rahmaan continued, “ASC’s garden was created with the community in mind,” she said. “We wanted to sustain a green space that could be used for our CrEATe Lab programs, during our after-school program, and to even connect it to our outreach programs. It is important to us to offer resources that will allow our community to be a healthier Pine Bluff. We will slowly but surely expand our garden in the hopes that the food that we grow will touch the lives of our visitors in the best way possible.”
The long-running Tinkerfest event features a different concept each year. Rahmaan said she picked this year’s theme in part because of renewed interest in gardening in today’s culture.
“People want to learn how to grow their own food but don’t always know where to start,” she said. “I only recently learned about GSC Community Gardens and I am thankful that they are bringing their knowledge to ASC.”
Obafemi Kinsiedilele and Freddie Savage Jr. run GSC Community Gardens, where their mission is to encourage, inspire, educate, and promote sustainable agricultural practices. Their goal is to build confidence, increase knowledge and develop skills to enrich the community, with a focus on youth.
TinkerGarden is in conjunction with ASC’s Second Saturday Family FunDay, which is an all-ages event held on the second Saturday of each month. The Pine Bluff Area Community Foundation is the longtime sponsor of Family FunDay.
For more information about TinkerGarden, contact Rahmaan at srahmaan@asc701.org or call 870-536-3375.
