“It was a lot of fun,” said Lydia Arestad, a senior at Willard. “Crawling around in the dirt is always fun.”
Out the back steps of Willard High, and across the sports field, is a small plot of land with a lot of life.
Students, staff and volunteers worked together to build the planting beds out of lumber and rubble from the school's renovation.
The project came to fruition through the cooperation of three Missoula-based organizations. Garden City Harvest, Willard High School and Flagship, an organization that focuses on after-school enrichment, donated time and money to the project.
Jason Mandala of Garden City Harvest said the organization budgeted $3,000 for the Willard garden, but hasn't had to spend all of it.
Willard school donated 150 feet of fencing to keep deer out, and built an irrigation system for the garden.
Vanessa Nie of Flagship said the students are the ones who really made the garden come to life. Students, some of whom hold regular jobs, came in after school and over the summer to build and maintain the garden.
One student even said she would be willing to come back and volunteer after graduation.
Nie said nearly half of the school's 140 students contributed to the project. There are normally only two or three students working in the garden at any one time, but the labor adds up, she said.
“It was hard hauling all that dirt,” said Monique Hasselbring, a senior.
Mandala said hard work is just one of the many learning experiences school gardens offer.
“I feel like a lot of kids these days don't know a lot about work,” he said.
Mandala knows about work. From planning to planting, he spent nearly 250 hours on Willard's garden.
Mandala said the garden also offers opportunities for math, science and art classes to study in the open air.
“The garden is a living classroom,” said Willard Principal George Sendon. He said it gives students more interesting ways to meet graduation requirements.
Sendon said it teaches students about environmental sustainability. Other schools may teach students about that, but “we're living it,” he said.
Mandala said one of the biggest challenges of building school gardens is making sure teachers use them. He said he visits classrooms to talk about the importance of locally grown food.
“We want to lend our expertise to make it as easy as possible for teachers to use these facilities and have a good time,” he said.
Last week, Willard students took fresh produce to the Missoula Food Bank.
Mandala said seeing the garden grow and seeing students get involved makes him confident about the future.
“I think it represents a change we're seeing in American society as a whole. It's important to understand how our food gets to us.”
Mandala said Garden City Harvest is working on building a garden at Big Sky High School next year.
Willard is not the first school to build a garden in conjunction with Garden City Harvest. The organization worked with Meadow Hill Middle School to plant a garden there, too.
Mandala said he'd like to establish a garden at a new school every year.
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Jason HeavyRunner wrote on Sep 18, 2008 10:23 AM:
Keep it up George and Posse! "