ELY – Nine months after the PBS “Great Gardening” program visited the Giving Garden last July, the program featuring the garden aired on April 3.
“Great Gardening” is a show produced by PBS Channel 8 in Duluth. It focuses on the challenges of gardening in zones 3 and 4, which are the plant-growing zones in northern Minnesota.
The half-hour program on Friday featured the Giving Garden in a three-minute spot at the start of the show, followed by a four-minute follow-up in the second half of the program.
Most of the footage is from an interview with Sally Koski, one of the six master gardener volunteers who work on the Giving Garden project. During the interview, she detailed how the garden got started and grew.
“The ‘Great Gardening’ show put out a call for gardens,” Koski told the Timberjay last July. “We submitted and they contacted us. … A. J. Larson from ‘Great Gardening’ visited Ely earlier this month to film the community garden for the show.”

Surprise
Channel 8 said they would contact Ely’s master gardeners before the clip on the Giving Garden ran, but Koski found out the show had aired when she returned home from the Thursday evening performance of the Northern Lakes Arts Association’s production of “Matilda.”
“I got home after playing in the orchestra for the musical,” Koski said, “and my husband said, ‘Dear, I was watching “Great Gardening,” and you know what? You were on it!’ I wish they had remembered to tell us because I would have posted it online so people in Ely could watch.”

Giving Garden
The Ely Giving Garden was started in the fall of 2022 with the aim of growing produce and giving it to the veterans visiting the VA Outpatient Clinic and to local food shelves. The garden harvested its first crop in 2023.
“We had more produce than the veterans could use,” Koski said.
The garden expanded in 2024, adding planters and fruit trees while also laying a nature walk to connect the Happy Days child care center at the Community Hub Building to the garden.

Grant
Going into its third growing season, the Giving Garden has just received a $2,000 grant from Lake Country Power.
“We applied in February,” Koski said, “and we just found out that we received it. It’s so new that we haven’t even met yet to figure of the specifics of spending the money.”
The grant will be for a pergola over the garden’s picnic table.
“Tim Hogan’s shop class will build the pergola as a project,” explained Koski. The grant will pay for the pergola’s materials, and the Ely Memorial High School shop class will donate the labor.
The April 4 “Great Gardening” show featuring the Ely Giving Garden can be streamed for free at pbs.org/video/ely-giving-garden-new-blooms-minnesota-growing-tips-4imer1/. The show is also available on YouTube.com/@GreatGardening.