Forget The Store: Grow Your Own Food!

Vonne Whittleton is one of those women who needs to keep busy, and if keeping busy means getting her hands dirty, so much the better.  Vonne is the owner of Vonne’s Victory Gardens, a new company that installs and maintains vegetable gardens for backyard farmers. 

Raised on a rice farm in Arkansas and with two grandpas who were farmers, Vonne was keen to start growing her own vegetables when she moved to Westport with her husband and two young children. Her interest in local food led her to study everything she could about growing food in Connecticut, as well as to learn how to raise chickens and bees. When she uprooted all the shrubs in her front yard and replaced them with potatoes and sunchokes, a friend suggested she should start a business.

“I can create organic gardens right on your property that are a convenient and environmentally conscious way of enjoying chemical-free fruits, herbs and vegetables,” she says. Vonne offers several different packages of fenced raised beds.

Vonne’s own garden is a work in progress. The fenced backyard is home to a flock of hens who provide plenty of eggs for the family, as well as aerating the soil and keeping ticks and grubs under control.  The vegetable garden is full of all the usual suspects – tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini – but there are a few surprises notably okra!  “I’m from the south, so I have to have okra,” she explained.

The path leading to the front of the house is lined with mountain strawberries, nestled among their straw mulch.  She wants to rip out the front lawn and plant an orchard, but her husband likes mowing the lawn, so the orchard may have to wait. The best part is under the front windows where most houses would have neat, or not so neat, rhododendrons or boxwoods. Vonne’s foundation plantings have been replaced by potato hills, beets and a riot of sunchokes.  The soil around the potatoes is nice and soft. Vonne sticks her fingers into the soil and comes up with a handful of blue potatoes. “My six-year old thinks digging in the soil for potatoes is the best thing ever,” she laughs.

For more information on Vonne’s Victory Gardens, call (203) 227-1876.

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