Seniors cultivate health and community through gardening program

By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff WriterLifelong planter Sharon Chandler grew up in Missouri, helping her grandmother, Helen Bundy, tend their home garden. Those early lessons have sustained Chandler throughout her life.“It was those times when we were in the garden and she was showing me different insects and bugs that are good for the plants and those that are not. Telling me ways to compost and put our scraps into the dirt and how that regenerates the dirt, fertilizes the dirt, but also provides other things,” recalls Chandler, 61.Grandma Bundy was planting seeds for the future.“She didn’t know it was the ecosystem, but it provides the ecosystem for birds and worms and farther on up the chain. Everything benefits from what comes out of our dirt, out of the ground,” said Chandler, who now has grandchildren of her own.& Today, Chandler is introducing other seniors to the love of gardening in an effort to positively impact their physical and mental well-being, and foster social connection. For the last two years she’s offered a Senior Mini Patio Gardening Program to residents of the Delta Cove senior apartment complex in South Sacramento. It’s run through her African American Women’s Health...