Cultivating Resilience: How Anya Teehan’24 Turned a Garden Plot into a Learning Lab

A good gardener knows how to respond when the growing season throws a curveball. Anya Teehan ’24 knew that surprises were likely coming her way when she signed up for a Community Agriculture and Gardening Education internship to cap off her undergraduate education – she graduated in December of last year with a degree in Environmental Conservation and Sustainability – but she wasn’t expecting the first one hurled her way.

“I definitely want to pursue a career in food systems, community agriculture and environmental conservation,” Teehan said. Her coursework hadn’t provided her with much hands-on experience with agriculture, so she decided to take the opportunity presented by the internship, which in years past had connected UNH students with participants in a local youth summer program, and together they tended a plot in a community garden in Concord.

However, the partnership with the youth program couldn’t happen this year, meaning that Teehan’s first curveball was that she needed to find a new purpose for her internship. She responded by indulging her curiosity in indigenous foodways.

“I reached out to the Kearsarge Food Hub, and I got 10 seeds of corn, squash and beans,” Teehan said. Kearsarge Food Hub’s Abenaki Seeds Project provides thousands of seeds each year to community gardeners who want to utilize the “three sisters” method of horticulture, discovered by indigenous Americans, in which seeds for beans, squash and corn are planted together.

Teehan’s 50-by-50 plot, which had been taken over by buckwheat when she first saw it, now has circular mini-plots within it. She has a “pizza garden” with tomatoes and herbs, a “three sisters” garden, and another for ornamental gourds. Though the young gardeners never visited the plot, Teehan nevertheless wrote a curriculum that would have engaged young people and taken them through the process of starting and nurturing a garden.

 Michael Smith, NH Agriculture in the Classroom manager at UNH Extension, said Teehan’s internship didn’t go as planned, and it produced an unexpected result.

“I was thinking of engaging the Kearsarge Food Hub and she opened the door for us, which is great,” Smith said.

Teehan said she gained a lot from the internship, both in regard to planning and carrying out an agricultural education program, and about gardening in general.

“I’ve learned that weeds grow fast,” Teehan said with a grin. She was impressed by the resilience of plants in general, she continued, noting that the vegetables and herbs she planted had to show some adaptability of their own. “While they were finding their roots, they looked sick and wilted, but they all made it.”

“I loved this internship,” Teehan said, noting that she had done others before that were based in offices. “I knew in my career that I want to be outside in some capacity, this confirmed that for me.”