Thursday, December 6, 2007

Season's Summary

From April to this November, the Citysprouts’ garden has been a busy place at the Haggerty School. Starting in early spring, volunteers and students grew lots of food including peas, tomatillos, peppers, cherry tomatoes basil, raspberries, carrots, lettuce and much more! Haggerty also brought Farmer Matt from Drumlin Farm to talk to classes about growing food.

Over the summer, Citysprouts hired wonderful youth interns to cultivate the garden, learn about local foods, visit working farms and develop as leaders in a first real job. Interns were amazed to find out how food grows and the work needed to do it - best of all they could taste the fruits of their labor. Applications for next year’s internship will be available in early spring.

This fall marked the beginning of the Haggerty Garden redesign process! Besides condensing the garden into a more accessible growing space, new features will include more shed space, teaching/seating areas, native plant landscape, and sunnier vegetable growing plots. Despite reconstruction, teachers embraced the garden this fall, bringing classes outside to enrich curriculum including measurement and math, studying seeds, senses, decomposition, health/nutrition, language and science observation skills.

In early November, most students in grades pre-K through 6 participated in the Haggerty's annual apple cider-pressing in the garden to learn more about local harvests and food history.

Finally, this season would not have been possible without the support and help of our wonderful family volunteers. Get your students involved in the garden next spring! Check out this Haggerty Garden resource blog for ideas or contact a garden coordinator. Also, please join us as a volunteer next season and help with redesigning the Haggerty Garden: weekly garden volunteer drop-in times re-start in late April.

Thanks for a great season and see you in the spring!
Amy and Laurie, Citysprouts Garden Coordinators

abaron AT citysprouts DOT org

lgaines AT citysprouts DOT org