Sunny Glen Garden

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Columbus, OH
Sunny Glen Garden

Growing into life's possibilities! Turning urban lawns into edible forest gardens & wildlife habitat Come join in the fun!

Sunny Glen Wellness wants to show others that growing your own food in your backyard can be fun, simple and cheap to start, easy to maintain and grow, and produce healthy fresh food almost all year round. You don't need to know all of this yourself, as this can be done through the sharing of ideas, information, equipment and resources, with neighbors and friends, where everyone is included and can

enjoy it together. Sunny Glen Wellness has a food garden and certified wildlife habitat in the North Linden community of Columbus, Ohio. Dianne and Stephen are working towards a self-sustainable and self-sufficient veggie and fruit food production in their urban backYarden instead of growing grass, using natural methods that require minimal care, produce a lot of food, and contribute to health and wellbeing of people, creatures, and the planet. In about 1000 sq ft of space, the Sunny Glen Garden has a baby perennial food forest consisting of chestnut, (fruit trees to come), hazelnut bushes, and a variety of currant, gooseberry & raspberries, an annual veggie garden, and flowers for the pollinators. Seeds are saved and traded in various seed saver groups in the neighborhood. They have a miniature sprouting operation with heat mats & grow lights where all the sprouties were started for the garden and a low cold frame with a temperature controlled wax cylinder opener to extend the growing season. A donated barrel composter, newspaper & recycled cardboard, leaf mulching & cured horse manure adds nutrients in the soil, and a drainable pond to collect rain water assists with irrigation.

08/31/2026

Can you assist me with this bumblebee ID? These are not great photos but are all I was able to get - I'm leaning towards Bombus auricomus (Black & Gold Bumblebee) instead of Bombus pensylvanicus (American Bumblebee) as it looks like it has a tiny tuft of yellow on the vertex of the head, a black thorax bordered with some yellow on the bottom, and T1 partial yellow looks like it decreases centrally. On Blue Sage, Salvia azurea...Can you let me know?

08/28/2026

How could your storm debris beome a resource where you live? The HUGE amount of debris that came down from the trees with the high winds and severe weather storm on Aug 11th has become an extremely valuable resource and is being intergrated in the Sunny Glen Garden in several ways:

- Lining pathways to provide habitat for wildlife
- Firewood for producing ash for a new organic soil health nutrient bio fertilizer / fermentation experiment I want to try
- Edging for raised garden beds
- Branches as trellises to prop up the tomato plants that got plastered to the ground in the storm
- Smaller branches as mulch around the hazel bushes (feeds soil, blocks weeds, mimics forest where they grow)
- Broken twigs as substrate for a new blue oyster mushroom bed with wood chips
- The rest I plan to use for the filler layers for new hugelkultur garden bed...

Saves on city resources too so they don't have to haul it all away when it can be a valuable resource right here in the yard! How could your storm debris beome a resource where you live?

08/27/2026

Even though this hugelkultur herb spiral gets only 3 hours of sunlight in this urban food forest, it has done fairly well - maybe the soil health practices help. The herb spiral was filled with carbon-heavy wood core material from my yard last year - layered with spent mushroom logs on the bottom, branches, twigs, leaves, soil, and wood chips on top.

The wood core materials act like a sponge, helping to keep my yard from flooding after all this excess rain, and storing it where it can slowly be released upward for plants during dry spells, like we had last summer with the drought. The mediterranean herbs that like it dryer, are on top, with herbs closer to the bottom that like it moist, when the rainwater flows down the spiral slope.

Except for the initial planting of the annual herbs in the spring where i watered it twice, nature and the hugelkultur self-sustaining system have taken care of the rest of my watering this year!

And I was surprised, as I think the brick, as well as providing seating areas for folks on tours, and a central place to put my tools so I don't lose them in the yard, lol, may absorb sunlight in the winter, radiating warmth and buffering the rosemary and lavender from the cold as they survived the winter.

I planted the strawberries as a ground cover to help retain moisture around the herb plants, but they really liked the hugelkultur spiral, blooming throughout the spring and summer, and almost took over the herbs!

Bonus - with the wood materials layered in, I won't have to add any additional nutrients or fertilizers - the wood materials breakdown over time, with the mycelium (maybe I'll get mushroom next year), feeding the microbes that will make the nutrients available for the plants, as I think the plants look pretty healthy in general.

I have (bottom to top): blueberries in the container, lemongrass, red form of common violet, peppermint, tulsi, pineapple sage, Thai basil, nasturtium, red basil, thyme, sage, lavender, rosemary, and strawberries!

Anyone else have experience with hugelkultur in herb spirals or garden beds?

08/21/2026

The teachers and staff at the Como Elementary School, located in our Linden neighborhood, are doing amazing things to support their students and parents by inviting local organizations and providing resources, as their school is one of 4 schools slated to close during the 2027-2028 school year as part of a broader plan by City Columbus Schools to slice $50 million from its budget. Fun time was had at their Ice Cream Social, sharing activities that can be made from the garden that are unique and eco-friendly. Many thanks to Myrlyn for facilitating the origami paper pot and seed envelop folding with the kids!

08/18/2026

How did your gardens fair after our severe weather with thunderstorms and high winds last week, and the deluge of rain this past week? Here is a comparison update on North Central Region SARE's To Dig or Not to Dig research at the Sunny Glen Garden site comparing the No Dig bed vs the Conventional Tilled Bed today! You be the judge!

08/15/2026

What would you do with this Zuke Monster? Many wonderful garden goodies from Gale at Natives In Harmony and the The Urban Farm Church weekly CSA!

08/14/2026

Honored to be able to host the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio for a tour of the Sunny Glen Garden this past weekend!

Aspects of modern day permaculture and regenerative agriculture that we use rarely acknowledge that these methods are deeply rooted and inspired by Indigenous land stewardship, connection to the land, cultural and spiritual traditions, ecological wisdom, that are all encompassing and managed in a delicate balance.

It was fun to share what has been implemented here with the food forest in an urban setting. I am grateful to have spent some time with them and came away with new perspectives and considerations to steward the little piece of land on which I live!

Please check out the wonderful work that Ty Smith and Masami Smith are facilitating at NAICCO.com and consider supporting their campaign!

08/13/2026

Yowsa! How did everyone fair after the thunderstorms? I feel very fortunate after the severe thunderstorm and high winds on Tuesday!!! As you can see, many branches and twigs fell out of the perennial food forest trees and bushes but all seem well. The storm cleared out the weakest branches from the trees, and can be part of the base of new hugelkultur garden beds or provide some raised bed siding / line the walking pathways. The smaller branches and twigs, I'll likely leave on the ground as they will provide the air spaces for the fall leaf drop and little tiny creatures so the leaves don't mat. Perhaps the density of the tree guilds/forest edge helped protect and shield the plants around them from the wind from being whipped around.

I can't say the same for the SARE's research grant annual vegetable garden, however... The Adirondack potato plants were flattened to the ground, and most of the C***o di Toro sweet peppers and Caperino hot pepper plants were knocked over or uprooted. The annuals often do not have the same strength and resilience to extreme weather conditions as most of the perennials food forest plants, but I'm hopeful these will recover as stems and leaves are intact.

What I am happy about, though, is with the mini swales and the leaf compost and wood chips that have been layered onto the ground every year - the torrential rain that comes all at once (over 1 in of rain per hour can overwhelm standard drainage systems) spread across the swales which gives the excess rainwater more time to be absorbed, so it can be stored in the ground for later use. So the swales & leaf compost did their job as there's no flooding here, like in the hardscapes (streets) in many areas of our Linden neighborhood where it was so deep the cars couldn't drive through.

The pond was showing the only water from Tuesday's deluge, and it's already soaked into the ground the next day. Hopefully, these layers in the food forest will have enough sponge left to absorb what is coming...stay safe everyone!

08/12/2026

Join us tonight (Wed, 8/12) as we dig into the no-dig farming method and compare it with conventional organic tilling practices used at our three urban growing sites for our North Central Region SARE grant. We’ll compare crop production, labor, irrigation needs, soil health, and material costs, to see where no-dig shines, where conventional methods still have a place, and what surprised us along the way in the first two years with drought, flooding, and severe weather, using our potato and pepper crops as real-world test subjects.

Come see the results, ask questions, and explore practical strategies you can take back to your own garden, farm, community plot, or urban growing space. No shovel required! 🥔🌿

Dig into the data. Get your hands dirty with ideas. Take home best practices that might work for you!

Address

Columbus, OH

Opening Hours

12pm - 3pm

Telephone

+14046036284

Website

http://www.sunnyglengarden.com/, https://linktr.ee/sunnyglengarden

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