New Ideas Growing at HCS
We are excited to be working with Mr. John Vechitto, a local resident (and Region 10 Board of Education member) to begin our newest project. Mr. Vechitto is taking courses so that he can be a certified Master Gardener. He has been working with us over the past few months to develop a plan for a vegetable garden. We are excited to announce that the first phase of our garden installation took place on Saturday, April 2nd. We built three raised beds! It is our hope that the seeds that our students recently planted will be transplanted into the beds and that we will all be able to enjoy a big salad courtesy of the HCS vegetable garden before the end of the school year!
The garden is front of the upper level building, just outside of Mrs. Haworth’s kindergarten classroom. The students will be able to see it when they arrive at school each morning. We are anticipating that the completion of the garden area will take place over the next 3-4 years, depending on the funding (and labor!) sources we are able to identify. We would like to thank the Paganini family for helping us get materials from Supreme Industries/Hinman Lumber. The lumber and soil for the beds were used for Phase I of our installation plan. We hope to be able to add additional raised beds as well as a paved outdoor classroom with benches and a potting table/bench to our garden. Eventually we hope to be able to enclose the garden with a fence.
Mr. Gauvain, one of our STEM Curriculum Coordinators, is going to be working with teachers to develop curriculum for each grade level so that all of the students will be involved in the garden. There are a variety of ways that this will happen, some examples are:
- Creating and managing a compost collection area
- Studying worms and insects
- Learning about how plants grow
- Planning how to plant the raised beds according to “Square Foot Gardening” guidelines
We welcome your involvement! Please contact Mr. Gauvain ([email protected]) if you are interested in helping with the garden. We would also appreciate donations of labor and materials that we can use to add on to the garden in the coming months and years!