Garden produces success

For Joey, Paul, Ashley, Kristina and the other students in the Family Connections Program at the Bancroft Center of Spokane School District 81, summer school took on a whole new dimension this year.

Instead of sitting inside with paper and pencil, they added dirt, seeds, sun and water to the curriculum in the form of a brand new raised bed vegetable garden set up on the school grounds.

They had a wonderful time learning to plant, grow, harvest and then prepare corn, six kinds of tomatoes, pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe, herbs, onions, lettuce, peppers, carrots, peas, zucchini and giant sunflowers.

They also harvested something else with their experiences; something more important than the vegetables themselves.

They harvested a sense of hope, accomplishment and success; how to work together; and how to problem solve when something didn’t go right with THEIR vegetables.

This kind of experience is in short supply for kids whose everyday lives are filled with major challenges that sometimes have kept them from growing and thriving in an ordinary classroom.

The garden was the brainchild of Francesca DePaolo, alternative program specialist in the Family Connections Program at Bancroft, and Camille Sullivan of the WSU Spokane County Cooperative Extension Food Sense Program. The two had been working together during the 2004-5 school year to help the fourth-to-eighth grade students learn about healthy nutrition and how to cook simple meals. Since they were already cooking food, they thought it would be good to grow some of it themselves.

A chance conversation with Mary Lou Reid, a longtime volunteer with Second Harvest Inland Northwest’s Community Gardens Program, brought dirt, lumber, seeds, plants and manpower together to turn an asphalt and wood chip-covered play area into five raised beds ready for the kids to plant and tend.

Most had never grown a garden, never planted a seed or pulled a fresh carrot out of the ground. This was entirely new to them. But it didn’t take long for them to adopt the garden as their own.

First they learned that hauling wheelbarrows of dirt was hard work, especially when you were as big as the wheelbarrow and it was raining.

“Almost (all the students) volunteered to help,” said Sullivan. They learned how to set out plants and how deep to plant seeds.

Then came the hard part for a bunch of eager kids; they waited. Every day in between watering and weeding, they checked to see if anything had come up. Pretty soon, in spite of cold weather and rain, things began appearing.

Over the next few months, they dealt with birds eating the lettuce (solved with a bird deflector made out of an eagle kite and old CDs), crop failure (the peas didn’t come up) and impatience (picking a few things before they were ready).

Finally, they began to harvest things to take to their cooking classes.

“It was like going on a treasure hunt,” said Sullivan. “If they harvested it out of the garden, when they came back in, they made sure they had theirs to dice and chop up.” One of the kids even showed everyone else how to cook fried green tomatoes.

The garden project generated new interest in the summer program.

“This year the garden made our summer program very special,” says Teresa Hurliman, principal at Bancroft. “It gave a common focus and common theme for kids to really organize themselves around. They seek the garden. It doesn’t represent work to them. It’s fun and calming.”

Sadly, recent budget cuts in the funding for the mental health part of the program have put the prospects of next year’s garden program in jeopardy.

“We are going to be challenged to look for ways to continue it,” says Hurliman.