Gardening 101: The teaching garden at Heritage Elementary
GRAPEVINE — Behind Heritage Elementary School, right against the building, sits a fenced-in garden, installed almost 20 years ago.
For the last 15 years, the Texas Master Gardeners of Tarrant County have run a Garden Club for the students there. It is one of several Outdoor Learning Environment (OLE) projects across Tarrant County.
The after-school program meets once a month and teaches children from grades 3rd through 5th the fundamentals of gardening. The club grows vegetables and herbs and teaches water harvesting and growing food for pollinators.
The garden is an impressive operation, tended to by a small group of master gardeners. Some have worked on this piece of land for over a decade. Funding comes from the Grapevine Beautification Project. There is a parent volunteer who helps run the Garden Club, and parents and staff have helped with maintenance and expansion projects over the years.
There is a waiting list to get into the club, because of the garden size and number of volunteers the club is limited to about 30 kids.
Gardening can teach a spectrum of lessons; from understanding our food supply to water and soil management. It also teaches the reward of effort and patience as well as the lessons taught from failure.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would have every elementary school in the DFW area put in a similar program. Gardens require investment and work so that means sponsors and volunteers. But the rewards of keeping kids outside growing things (and away from a video screen) are immense.
When you see a grade school student showing off a cabbage or tomato that they grew, you see the benefit immediately. To garden is to understand an ecosystem, and experience the importance of work and planning.
To garden is to follow the weather. Gardening unfolds across the seasons, bringing challenges and life lessons while getting to play in the dirt. I applaud the teachers, staff, and parents of Heritage Elementary for keeping and maintaining such a robust garden, one of the better OLE programs in the area.
Jeff Ray is the senior First Alert Meteorologist at CBS News Texas and an avid gardener. When not covering the weather, he finds stories about our changing climate in north Texas. If you would like Jeff to talk to your group about how changing weather patterns are changing the way we garden in this area, please email him at jaray@viacomcbs.com.