Gardening at a rural School
This spring I have been helping my children’s small rural school start and maintain a garden. This has been an exciting experience as well as a true labor of love. Taking care of our personal Homestead and all that entails in our own gardens and projects on top of the school garden has been nothing short of a nearly full-time job. However, something within me just can’t let the idea of a school garden go to rest. Maybe it’s just my passion for being with the plants at all times that has driven me to take on yet another wild project like the school garden, or maybe I truly am crazy, ha-ha!
My insanity for being busy in any garden space available to me has shown its benefits, though, as a few of the students are very enthusiastic about the garden space and have shown a true interest in learning about the plants, eating the food we grow in the garden, and helping tend to the plants by weeding and planting. Based on those benefits alone, I’d consider the project a success, and any reason to share my passion for the plants and the garden is enough for me! I suppose I’ll continue on with the garden and see where it takes us and what we can achieve through the project.
So far, we have planted kale, pumpkins, artichokes, peas, strawberries, sunflowers, marigolds, calendula, and a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs in the school gardens. Our garden consists of four small garden beds and several pots we can grow in. I look forward to seeing how we can grow and expand the garden over the coming years, and I hope it can be a place of community connection at our rural school, where families can enjoy some fresh produce the children grow and receive educational benefits as well. I often feel like many folks think of a school garden as just a fun hobby the kids can do, but research has proven that integrating a school garden into curriculum objectives can be extremely beneficial for learning outcomes across every subject!
Taking on the project of running the school garden has been a worthwhile endeavor and has been another way for me to expand the things I have been learning and experiencing on my own Homestead into the community, and I just wanted to share a little bit of that excitement here on the blog. I hope to inspire anyone who has maybe considered getting involved in their own school's garden or starting one up for the kids, and to share how rewarding it has been for me personally to be involved in a project like the school garden.
