Western Avenue garden planted with TLC
Come this fall, students at Western Avenue Elementary School in Geneva hope to pile up produce they’ve grown themselves, on the school grounds.
If all goes well, there will be lots of pumpkins, birdhouse and apple gourds, sunflowers, green beans and corn. They may also be snacking someday on peaches, plums, pears, apples and cherries from the 15 trees in their orchard, or on raspberries, blackberries and blueberries from bushes to the south of their Get Up and Grow garden.
“It’s really cool,” said first-grader Victor Wright, 7, after doing his part Thursday, planting a gourd.
The whole school planted in the four large plots on the northeast corner of the school property. Fifth-graders planted the corn a week ago, but planted pole beans and pumpkins around the stalks, an arrangement American Indians called “The Three Sisters.” Beans fix nitrogen in the soil, which corn needs, cornstalks support the beans’ climb, and the pumpkin vine and foliage shade the ground around the corn and bean stalks, helping to retain moisture. Students plan to plant some root vegetables in the fall.
This is the second year the school has had such a garden. Materials, including seeds, have either been donated or purchased with money from a Kane County Health Department Fit Kids 2020 grant, and through private fundraisers. One of the biggest donations, physically and financially, came from Paveloc, which has donated pavers to create paths and a small gathering space between the plots.
Principal Ron Zeman is an enthusiastic supporter of the garden, and spent much of Thursday working with the children and volunteers.
Jennifer Kelley is one of the parents who came up with the idea for the garden.
“Our goal is to create a space where we can enhance the existing curriculum,” she said. Teachers can take kids out in to the garden to learn science, mathematics, art, even reading. A kindergartner was excited to find a worm when they dug Thursday, and the teacher promptly reminded the child that the class had read “The Diary of a Worm.”
The garden fits with one of the school improvement plan’s goals: Improving the social and emotional health of the children. They learn to work with adults of various ages or, in the case of the kindergartners, with their fourth-grade “buddies.”
Children started the plants from seed, either in the ground or in biodegradable pots that were planted Thursday.
Families have signed up to take a turn each week over the summer to water and weed the garden. And last year when the pumpkins were ready, the school made a party of it.
Victor gave his pumpkins a generous drink of water, and said he would remember which one he planted. “I think it is going to grow extra-big,” he said.