Sustainable learning

Food garden program helps young students, JMU have positive community impact

By LIZZIE STONE The Breeze

Seen at schools throughout Harrisonburg are small plots of land that’ve been turned into gardens by contributors across the city assisting students in learning about sustainable garden practices and building connections with the environment and healthy food.

Kathy Yoder, educational outreach director at Vine & Fig, explained her nonprofit group supports educational gardens like the ones at Harrisonburg schools. Local elementary school students are able to hear about healthy food and where it comes from, she said, and the lessons are reinforced by how often they can interact with the garden.

“It just makes sense to have them in the school gardens,” Yoder said. “I think the school gardens are really taking off and the schools see the need for getting kids outside.”

Students get excited about vegetables and green spaces in the gardens which makes the values of healthy foods stick, Yoder said, and they’re able to identify the plants in their school gardens and feel involved in the growing process.

“Research shows when kids have access to green space, then they’re going to care for the environment as an adult,” Yoder said. “It’s when they’re young that we need to teach that.”

Harrisonburg educators are attempting to give the students connections to the garden that’ll stick with them, Yoder said. At Waterman Elementary, students planted a pizza garden where they grew all the separate components of the meal.

“They were like, ‘Oh my god, I can still smell the pizza’,” Yoder said. “When they came into the garden a week later, it was just so sweet for them to be so excited about their pizza.”

Many student groups at JMU take part in volunteer work at the school gardens, including service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega (APO). Aidan Love, service chair of several volunteer programs for APO, said the group has been volunteering at the gardens for years. The group does physical labor to build and support the gardens and assists with some teaching.

“[The project] is both about actively having environmental impact, and then also moving it forward to future generations in a fun, creative way,” Love said.

JMU geography professor Amy Goodall has been involved in turning the gardens into a space that brings in pollinators. The gardens are part of a network of study sites within the city where students have been studying pollinators for over a decade.

Goodall brings her classes to the gardens to do research when possible, she said. Elementary students benefit from the work they do in the gardens as well, Goodall said. She and her students have the opportunity to talk to the students about the animals and plants they find.

“They’re excited about pollinators,” Goodall said. “They’re excited about everything that moves in the garden.”

Volunteers and coordinators are still working on improving the spaces, Goodall said, such as new composting bin systems, adding more garden beds and sign painting. More work is required every year to keep everything healthy, to till the soil, to replant everything, to expand the areas and to improve and make repairs on equipment and structures, she said.

“I feel so enriched by being involved in the community,” Love said. “I’m not just ... not doing anything for the community that I’m living in for a temporary amount of time. I’m giving back. I think that’s so important for students to do.”

The program will continue to expand within Harrisonburg schools, and students will continue to use the gardens. Those involved with the project said they strongly believe in its value and will continue to work to support it.

“I just think giving people new skills, giving people new knowledge that they otherwise wouldn’t, from the school system … will be something really beneficial for the community, and hopefully for the world,” Love said.

CONTACT Lizzie Stone at stone3em@dukes. jmu.edu. For more coverage of JMU and Harrisonburg news, follow the news desk on Twitter @BreezeNewsJMU.