Coupeville grows gardening education

Published 8:00 pm Saturday, October 7, 2006

It is months before the seeds of their new crop will be planted, but gardening is already on the minds of a group of Coupeville Elementary green thumbs.

Next weekend the school’s gardening club will be busy as can be as they prepare for a fall bake and plant sale Oct. 15 at Coupeville Elementary School. It will spread word about Coupeville Elementary’s Garden Club and raise funds that will sprout another season of learning.

Gardening has been a lesson taught at Coupeville Elementary for years — after all, what parent hasn’t been bestowed with a tiny sprout of marigold or even beans?

In 2004 Coupeville Elementary library-media coordinator Christy Chapman and Bethany Hopkins of the Navy SAFE program formally began a garden club. Students met after school to build raised beds and continued the work each school week since to plant and tend the garden.

“The kids don’t even know they’re learning because to them they’re just having fun,” Chapman said. “But this definitely meets another need for our kids. It’s a way for some of them to know they can be successful.”

The club’s meetings begin in April and continue through mid-June. The student gardeners host a garden party the last week of school at which they snack on vegetables from their garden. All summer, students and their families harvest.

This spring’s crop was especially plentiful. The garden had strawberries, tomatoes, poppies, sweet peas, beans, squash, catnip, parsley, potatoes, chard and delphiniums. One year the club grew potatoes.

“It was like finding treasure for them,” said co-facilitator Aimee Bishop.

Students learn about planting, transplanting, cultivating, watering, harvesting and weed identification.

The club worked with the food service program at the elementary school to take vegetable waste and recycle it in the club’s composting worm bins. They began the recycling program after hearing information from volunteers with the Washington State University Waste Wise program. Speakers such as the Waste Wise volunteers are frequent with the club.

Fourth-grader Marisa Etzell has taken her lessons home with her. She now helps tend her family’s garden and continues to learn about living organically.

“I have a garden at home and I really like the organic foods we grow,” she said.

Kristi Etzell, a member of the Greenbank Garden Club and Marisa’s mom, enjoys being able to share the learning at home.

“It’s been a wonderful gift,” Etzell said. “The whole family now has discussions about where our food comes from and we all learn together.”

Etzell said she enjoys the fact that the garden club begins with something as easy as digging in the dirt and turns into a growing education.

“The learning is so simple yet has so much potential,” she said. “Farmers have an important place in America. It’s important for the kids to realize their food comes from some place besides a supermarket.”

The club gets support from the Coupeville and Greenbank gardening clubs who act as mentors to the tiny green thumbs. Washington State University Master Gardeners and Sally’s Garden also lend support. Last students took a field trip to Rosehip Garden where owner and club co-facilitator Linda Bartlett gave a tour of the grounds and talked of organic gardening.

Gordon Burton, a former Coupeville Garden Club member, has grown so fond of the student gardeners that he continues to tend the crops and the minds of fledgling greenthumbs.

“The purpose of gardening is to grow things and eat them, how fun is that,” Burton said of his philosophy.

He helped coax some testy lettuce, pea and radish sprouts in his greenhouse. Burton watched over, watered and helped weed the garden during the summer. He also tended to the club’s three worm bins. His wife, Peggy, also voluntered with the students.

Burton downplays his involvement and devotion to the program.

“I just dig holes and keep the kids from bumping each other with shovels,” he said.

Last year’s fall bake and plant sale raised over $1,000 which helped purchase supplies and plants. It also helped contribute to the club’s new garden shed. Thanks to the addition of a $500 grant from the Coupeville Garden Club, students from Tom Eller’s wood shop at the high school were able to build the shed. Central Whidbey Lions helped create an awning and Burton helped fine- tune things inside.

Chapman continues to be amazed at how many people are directy or indirectly involved in the garden project.

“It truly takes a community to grow a garden,” she said. “Whether it’s students, parents or businesses and organizations that donated time and materials — this is a whole town project.”