No Potato Left Behind at The GreenMount School

As an urban K-8 independent school, our students come to us with varying degrees of experience with gardening and the outdoors. GreenMount parents want to raise their children in the culturally rich and diverse atmosphere that the city offers, and they also want their children to understand our relationship with the environment, our stewardship of the planet and the unique role humans play in the balance of nature. To that end, one of our keystone programs is Explorations, an environmental science curriculum that is born from the belief that kids should go outside, get dirty, and be awed by the natural world.

Since the school was started in 1993 we have been gardening. First, in a borrowed backyard plot, then after moving to a larger building, in raised beds in our own yard. With additional funding from The Maryland Environmental Trust and from Parks and People Foundation we expanded our gardens from five to nine beds. Now every child at the school spends time in the garden, planting, tending, weeding and harvesting. The garden offers teaching opportunities in many areas of study: botany, economics, community service, hydrology, nutrition and geology. There are also opportunities to explore cultural studies by planting crops commonly eaten in other countries.

We focused our attention on growing food that would be most appreciated by the guests at Paul’s Place, a community support center in Washington Village/Pigtown. The center is located in a food dessert, and fresh foods are particularly difficult for area residents to obtain. All of the produce was donated to Paul’s Place…about 18 bags in the course of the summer. The center is near and dear to our heart since our 8th graders volunteer there three times a year, helping to prepare and serve meals and assisting guests as they choose new clothes.

We love to see the reactions and problem solving from the students to all aspects of gardening. From the child who wanted to talk to the plants each week to encourage them to grow, to the child who came to appreciate the beneficial insects, to the cheers from the group who harvested the impressive sweet potatoes, each child has a story and relationship with the garden. As nature is unpredictable and interesting, so are the experiences through the garden. When the broccoli was attacked by mysterious striped beetles, all students were involved in identifying the predators and determining an organic solution. The presence of the beetles also affected the students’ decision to plant other members of the cabbage family, knowing that this beetle was in our midst. Those are the really exciting teaching moments, the ones that are generated from the students’ own curiosity and experience.