Welcome to The Sunflower Garden. This garden is brought to you by Incredible Edible Merchantville in partnership with The Merchantville Green Team. We would like to give a special thanks to Chris Mattern and Beth Manning for all of their volunteer efforts. Why Sunflowers? Not only are sunflowers beautiful, but they have a special ability to draw heavy metals from the soil. As this path used to be a railroad, there is a known risk for the potential of heavy metal leaching into the soil.
Therefore, this Spring, we had the soil tested to get a baseline as to the composition of the soil. We will use the sunflowers as a way to remediate the soil and retest next Spring to see what kind of effect, if any, the sunflowers have had on the soil. It is our goal to ensure the plot’s safety as a future public food growth site. Enjoy the garden and be sure to check back in next year, to see the results of our Sunflower/Soil Experiment.