CALUMET — Volunteers helped build and plant a therapy garden at the Barbara Kettle Gundlach Shelter Saturday.

A grant from Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development funded the project, which was also used to create a garden for the culinary program at the Horizons Alternative High School in Mohawk.

The gardens were planned to be built last summer, but were delayed because of the pandemic, said Angie Carter, an assistant professor of environmental and energy justice at Michigan Technological University. She applied for the grant along with Rachael Presley, assistant regional planner for the Western Upper Peninsula Planning & Development Region and Michelle Seguin, director of community health at Portage Health Foundation.

They’d been planning collaboratively over Zoom for the past year. Students doing independent research with Carter helped come up with ideas for the garden and building the beds.

“We wanted to do this last year, but better that we get to do it in person together,” she said.