St. Columba School’s usual classes were utterly disrupted Thursday afternoon – not by a fire drill, bomb threat, billowing winds or some other act of God – but by an almighty schoolwide gardening project.
Part science lesson, part community service, part school beautification, for the second year in a row, St. Columba students spent the afternoon in the gymnasium planting almost 1,600 seeds in 16 trays lined with rock wool and drenched in water.
The plants – cucumber, rosemary, pumpkin, zucchini, lupine, summer squash, sunflower, bush snap, peas, green beans and sweet basil – will grow in classrooms until May, when some will go to market in a Mother’s Day plant sale. The rest are destined either for St. Columba’s food bank or to be replanted on the school’s chain-link fence as a hydroponic hanging garden.
From the Bible’s account of Adam and Eve to scientists’ ominous reports about global warming, one might conclude adult humans to be innately inappreciative of gardens and plant life.
Judging by St. Columba students, children seem a different matter. After Durango Botanical Society docents Tish Varney, Susan Ostendorp and Melanie Palmer led a vigorous question-and-answer session, students rushed to tables, where they eagerly thrust seeds into the sodden trays.
The gardening process suited children of all temperaments.
Some eighth-graders, such as Tierney Brennan and Kaitlyn Brock, approached planting with the precise, steady hand-eye coordination of a neurosurgeon, first positing the seed, then gently pushing it down with a kebab stick. Meanwhile, younger students seemed to emulate Buffy the Vampire Slayer, thrusting seeds into the rock wool then stabbing them with wooden sticks with sudden, morally self-confident violence.
Principal Kevin Chick said “the whole school doesn’t really see the culmination of the gardening project until months later, as the plants grow over the summer. When they’re mature, we give them to the food bank, and we talk to the students about charitable giving,” he said.
Chick said the project’s primary purpose is to implant in the students “a love of serving other people. There’s no agricultural spin to it, beyond engaging an activity that benefits a community larger than our own.”
For now, the students largely seemed to disagree with Chick’s interpretation of the project’s value.
First-graders Ben Williams and Braden Gurule said they relished the prospect of tomatoes.
Gabe Clark, also a first-grader, said he approved of gardening: “I put down a lot of seeds at my home. I haven’t checked them yet. But I’ve seen some little ones come out.”
Fellow first-grader Elli Scott likewise said she thought gardening was “cool.” She said: “I just put down pumpkins and my first flowers in the garage with my dad. We’re working on that.”
First-grader Karson Harbison said he liked the idea of the school garden, since he loves the “one at my Grandma’s.”
Meanwhile, Austin Romero expressed doubts, saying he’s already a regular at the community garden. “I go with my mom. I like it, and I don’t like it. I like playing with the dogs who live next door and picking the cherries and petting the goats,” he said.
For the rest of the year, the plants are the students’ responsibility. Science teacher Nicole Schnee said their growth provides a visceral real-world example of the exact life-process usually reserved for dry diagrams of seeds sprouting in biology textbooks.
And St. Columba parent Jenni Gross, who’s directing the school’s own garden project with help from her expert husband, Jake, said she can’t wait to sew landscape fabric through “that ugly 20-foot chain-link fence” that now surrounds the playground and convert it into a hanging, hydroponic garden that waters the plants and flowers through a drip system.
“It’s going to be absolutely beautiful – the whole fence – except it’s going to get bombarded with kickballs,” she said.
Chick said he wasn’t worried about kickballs smiting the plants.
“I think God will protect them; don’t put that in the paper,” he said, laughing. “The kids are good. And if they care about the plants, they’ll know that’s an area they have to be careful about.”
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
