Kindergarten students crowded around their principal last week as he knelt in the garden at Brookside Elementary School during a hands-on lesson about “growing food on top of the ground and under the ground.”
“When I pulled up a carrot, brushed off the dirt and ate, the kids were very surprised,” said Principal Fritz Monroe.
Monroe and all the classes at Brookside have had plenty of chances to dig up carrots and potatoes and pick corn, peppers, squash and other vegetables, as well as fruits such as red and white raspberries.
The school partnered with Local Matters and Urban Wild last fall to design a “Three Sisters-Settlers Garden” as part of Brookside’s Schoolyard Enhanced Learning effort.
Monroe said Schoolyard Enhanced Learning focuses on “making the schoolyard an effective outdoor classroom.”
The Three Sisters Garden concept is an ancient way of planting used by American Indians in which corn, beans and squash are planted simultaneously in rounded mounds of soil, so the corn supports the beans and the squash forms a natural mulch for the soil.
Harvest from the school garden has been plentiful, Monroe said.
“I just took a bushel basket full of sweet corn over the church food pantry,” he said.
The school is donating much of the harvest to the food pantry at Smoky Row Brethren Church.
“I like the fact the kids can learn about plant cycles firsthand and literally see the fruits of their labor, from spring until now,” Monroe said. “They’re also learning all about community sharing and caring for other people, as well as how to care for plants and the earth, so they will eventually become good stewards of the earth.”
The garden is being used in academic lessons across all grade levels, Monroe said.
“The fourth-graders were out there recently, making observations about the plants and animal life, and went back into class to do some writing about the garden,” he said. “All the grade levels can enjoy the garden. I’m very much a novice gardener myself and it’s fun to see the young faces when I pull a big potato out of the ground — and they were very big potatoes, which was surprising to me too.”
Monroe said a lot of student and parent volunteers took care of the garden over the summer.
“A lot of families signed up to weed and water, so we literally had 95 percent of the summer days covered, with people coming out at least six of seven days a week,” he said. “It has been a wonderful experience and we’re already talking about how we’ll revise the garden for next year.”
One feature of the garden is a solar and seasonal earth calendar designed by former Brookside student Chris Taylor.
Taylor’s calendar has a central pole that casts a shadow and will pinpoint the seasonal solstices and equinoxes.
Monroe said students also will create a time capsule vault for the fall equinox, Sept. 22, and fill it with messages to next year’s students.
“It will be opened on the spring equinox, around March 20, and those students will put in more messages to future students,” he said.
Matt, community volunteer
