Amanda Stamp
Winner of the 2025 Strawberry Sprout Grant
Allie Cohen
Winner of the 2024 Strawberry Sprout Grant
​From Broad Run, Virginia, Amanda Stamp recently started a new farm called Connected Roots Farm, a 17 acre farm.
Her goal is to grow Connected Roots Farm into an organic, diversified flower and vegetable farm that uses regenerative practices to help nurture the land and provides the community access to nutrient dense food and flowers. Amanda plans to start growing flowers to sell at farmers markets and local delivery. She will also begin establishing perennials such as blackberries, fruit trees, herbs, and perennial flowers. In the following years, she will start vegetable production to sell at farmers markets and CSA, connecting with her local community and providing much needed local produce.
Her background is in global education, working with students, teachers, and administrators around the globe. Her work focused on helping people understand our interconnected world and how to understand, celebrate, and respect one another and our planet. directly in her local community to begin making changes that would focus on food security and increased local production. Amanda began participating in her local Food Council meetings to understand the landscape. Learning the many restrictions growers are facing, Amanda applied to join the Fairfax City Environmental Sustainability Committee with the goal of bringing food security and food production on the radar of the local government. During her two two years on the committe, she was able to push for expanded definitions of urban agriculture in the Comprehensive Plan, which is a stepping stone for allowing people to grow food for sale.
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During the pandemic, Amanda became part of a community group that began growing and donating fresh produce to local food pantries to help with food shortages and increased community need. This group soon became a non-profit called Hands on Harvests and she joined the board in 2022. Their work focuses on creating and sustaining a network of growers to increase the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables for Northern Virginians. Her husband and his family are from India. Amanda's mother-in-law and her did not share a common language, but a few months out of the year when she visits, they would work in the garden, admire the growing plants, and cook together. Her mother-in-law taught her many things about growing and how to cook her favorite recipes. Despite the language barrier, they formed a bond and built memories that Amanda holds dear to her heart.
Amanda plans to use the funds to purchase a variety of tools and equipment with the grant including plants, tarps, wood chipper, buckets, hand-tools, seeder, raised beds, irrigation equipment, and more. She also plans to use the funds to help build her website, and have a new logo for her new farm business!
Visit her progress on her new farm on her IG account: @connectedrootsfarm
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Allie is a certified Horticulture Therapies who lives with her family in Eason Connecticut. She has worked for over 10 years alongside seniors in skilled Nursing, Memory Care, and Assisted Living. Recently, she started a
non-profit organization called Restorative Blooms​.
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Restorative Blooms provides seniors with an opportunity to connect with nature through flower arranging, plat propagation, and other nature based activated. by offering In-Home and group Sessions, as well as Inter-Generational programs, they aim to promote active aging and social inclusion
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Restorative Blooms works with all seniors no matter their congnitive, physical, or emotional state. The goal is to reduce social isolation, boredom, and depression I the senior community through nature based programming.
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The grant funds will be used for project start up funds and materials with the goal being to create an accessible garden for participants and volunteers to grow flowers and plants.
To Learn More About Restorative Blooms Visit
Petra Brandt
Winner of the 2023 Strawberry Sprout Grant
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Petra is a homemaker in Sykesville, MD living with her husband of 23 years and their 2 daughters. She is also the caretaker of her oldest daughter, who is wheelchair bound due to a rare neurological disorder. Last year, Petra and her husband took the leap and started a quarter of an acre to grow cut flowers on. She has since prepared seven 100 foot flower beds and a soon to be completed deer fence around the field.
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In the future, she plans to sell wholesale to florists as well as sell Funds will help build her business by helping purchase new equipment, creating a website, and much more! to and engage the community by using a pop-up stand, attend Farmer's Markets, and possibly arrange bouquet workshops. The business will hopefully be a great way to engage both of their daughters.
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Funds will help build her business by helping purchase new equipment, creating a website, and much more!
MARGARET GOOLSBY
Winner of the 2022 Strawberry Sprout Grant
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A veteran and Montgomery County, MD resident, Margaret's involvement in horticulture began at the age of 5 in her family garden growing concord grapes, tomatoes, beets, beans, and peas. Her father taught her about pollination, composting, direct seeding, and how to harvest a crop. This grew into a life long passion and in 2015, she earned a certificate in ecological horticulture from the Center of Ecological Agriculture and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California in Santa Cruz. After receiving her B.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from The University of Maryland, travelled to Tanzania and South Africa where she grew vegetable peanuts with women farmers and assisted in the cooperative movement.
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Currently she is working as a seasonal gardener at Brookside Gardens and is establishing her own landscaping business, Hyacinth Landscaping. The name Hyacinth was inspired by her favorite proverb,
"If I had but 2 loaves of bread, I'd sell one and buy hyacinths, for they would feed my soul."
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From Margaret on how horticulture inspires her, "Planting seeds means believing in a future. It reminds me that the world is beautiful and if I slow down enough, I will see and enjoy it. It inspires me to appreciate the uniqueness that exist in nature and on our planet."
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She will use the grant funds to further her education in sustainability and landscape design by taking classes at Montgomery College.