The garden offers a myriad of enrichment for the young and old; exercise, food, beauty all wrapped up in one of the wonders of life.
Master Gardener Mary Urias (alias Keep Fairfield Beautiful Executive Director) sees teaching opportunities in the garden, so she decided to incorporate The Clemson Extension Jr. Master Gardener Program into an after school program at Fairfield Intermediate School.
Mary saw the opportunity to connect youth to the environment and community service through Jr. M.G. which was easy to do because at the end of each chapter in the book there is a community service project.
Since 4-H programs are built on “learn by doing activities” this project was a perfect fit- children, soil, nature and improving our environment through service learning projects. Lisa Brandenberg , principal at Fairfield Intermediate loved the idea as an after school program.
Granted, capturing the attention of youth with gardening is no slight feat; with cell phones, game boys, DS’s and computers the challenge was to keep their eyes and ears tuned into something different.
For participant Michael Urias that was how mold grows on bread, apple juice and yeast. Michael especially liked “ weird looking bugs seen through the eyes of a dissecting scope”, and he didn’t like the plastic flowers planted in pots at the entrance to his school.
The class is jammed full of gardening information, the chapters include: plant growth and development, soils and water, ecology and environmental horticulture, insects and diseases, landscape horticulture, fruits and nuts, vegetables and herbs.
Other master gardeners that helped teach the classes included Bootsie Shepherd, Alice Rice and Anna Beasley. These gardeners shared their green thumb with several children that completed the class: Andrew Holmes, Michael Urias and Amanda Mitchell.
For Mary, the beauty of the project is just that, beautification. Mary feels like it is so important to foster interaction between youth and adults through community service projects. Keeping their hands in the dirt (I mean soil) is a great way to see a tangible- germinate . Planting plants/flowers are the perfect way to enhance a building or community site. That is one of the many activities that the children engaged in; they removed those plastic flowers in the pots and planted pansies, much to the joy of all the teachers at school.
Andrew said the project was fun, that he really liked the insects and learning about the importance of sunlight, soil, air and nutrients. He learned about how light effects plant growth and found out that it was “really hot” in the green house where they had started plants from seed. Andrew said the fake flowers were “all tore up and rusty”. The children sowed seeds in their greenhouse, they planted pansies in several locations and applied mulch around several Crepe Myrtle trees, see picture.
Although participation was thin, Mary felt like the program was successful because one has to start somewhere. Mary’s philosophy is that children have to have balance, they need to know that there is a chance to make a difference—kids need to feel that there is a way to change people’s behavior. She feels like community service instills in children the value of giving something back to their community.
The Jr. Master Gardeners Program is wonderfully enriching in and of itself. It is even better when volunteers find ways to use Jr. Master Gardeners as a teaching tool to inspire children to want to learn more, while completing a community service task.
Have a good garden and remember--sometimes a garden isn’t just a garden.
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