For the second week in a row, I did something that I’d never done before…supervise the creation of a square garden at the high school where I teach. Although it was a rewarding experience, yesterday was the culmination of months of planning, overcoming many obstacles and several donations.
My main objective for revitalizing the school’s garden was to encourage students to spend time outside doing something postive. Granted, the area that was formerly used as the garden had become so overrun with weeds that it looked like a vegetable and weed cemetery. Besides, most people did not even know that the school had a garden.
I attended three classes sponsored by The Sustainable Food Center, which subsequently awarded Akins High School with $200 toward the implementation and maintenance of our two square gardens. Then Home Depot gave us $75 worth of gift certificates, which helped pay for the lumber, soil and mulch…the added bonus was that one of the Home Depot managers delivered the materials to our school since my Honda Fit couldn’t possibly fit all that plus the tools that Keep Austin Beautiful lent us: 10 rakes, 20 pairs of work gloves, 10 hand cultivators and a wheel barrow! ( Yes, I actually put a wheel barrow in my tiny car and I have the picture to prove it!) The Natural Gardener also gave us $100 in gift certificates, which we used to buy a selection of vegetables, herbs and organic fertilizer.
The theatre teacher at Akins graciously lent us battery-operated, cordless drills, both for predrilling and power screwing the wooden frames together. The rest of the manual labor was done mostly by 7 students, another teacher and one of my gardening expert friends who dropped by to lend us a hand and some valuable advice.
In the end, we truly created a community garden since so many people, representing different aspects of our community had come together to make our Akins Garden Party a success!