Crops By Kids New Garden - June 2011
by Susan Barnard

Our new Crops By Kids Garden was a year long process. Our six year old garden across from Barre Town School had to be moved. It took us almost a year to decide where to place it. All of us have heard about “location, location, location”. Well, we landed in the perfect spot. Every person who entered our Barre Town Middle and Elementary School has to only take 20 giant steps and they were in our new garden. It had two very big pine trees in the middle that caused us great concern, but once spring came and we were able to tackle the roots and remove them, our new garden vision came to life!

Members of our school went to a Shelburne Farms “retreat” last June to start planning for our new garden. This time together gave our team an action plan and united us with the Abbey food service in our school. This was an essential part of our vision.

This winter/spring our school took a course offered by FEED (Farm to School Food Education Every Day!) with instructors Joseph Kiefer and Danielle Pipher. Nineteen Barre Town teachers and para-educators took this course. Many people signed up to grow plants in their classroom. We were able to recruit several master gardeners.

The “giant” in the development of the new garden was an architect who helped us with the design. Mr. Joel Goon, from Deep Roots Design, created a computer animated garden design, based on our ideas. This electronic presentation helped to sell our vision to our school board, principals, and community.

Our new Crops By Kids garden ended up with fourteen 4’x8’ garden beds. Thirteen beds use two stacked 6” x 6” white cedar boards. One bed, designed for our special needs population, uses three stacked boards. The cedar was grown locally and purchased from Goodrich Lumber Company in Albany, Vermont. The raised beds are secured at the corners with a lap joint and timber lock screws.

After producing the garden design, Joel Goon continued with our garden project and loved working with our students. He coordinated and worked with three vocational groups from Spaulding High School. In addition, he held together the core of volunteers that helped us throughout the project. Our pergola with kiwi vines growing up the lattice work would have never come to be without Joel’s expertise (the kiwi came from Elmore Roots nursery).

We currently have grapes growing, ever-bearing strawberry plants, and all sorts of vegetables. In addition, we have a “tops and bottoms” bed, and a rainbow bed. This fall we are planning on having a televised garden cooking show with Video Visions from Barre. This student-chef cooking demonstration will go out nationwide. We also plan to have a big fall harvest garden celebration.

Another major thread that holds our garden together is the summer school library. Each Wednesday, our school librarian, Heather Kralik, reads garden books and has an activity in the garden. This gets our community into our garden. We are also involved in having three master garden evening tours this summer.

We have received two major grants to make this possible: 2011 Vermont School Community Garden mini-grant ($1000) and Garden In Every School Grant ($500).

For more information, please contact Susan Barnard at sbarnbte@u61.net.