WILLIAMSBURG – Farmers are readying their fields with the return of spring, but children from the Anne T. Dunphy School won’t have to wait long for their first harvest.
Raised garden beds are already springing to life with fresh greens inside the school’s educational greenhouse. Preschool to sixth-grade students – 175 of them – will soon be eating school lunches supplemented with farm-fresh produce from their own school backyard. Despite recent fluctuations in weather, they won’t run the risk of a late frost.
“I’m imagining that in two weeks we will have our first lettuce harvest,” said Hope Guardenier, garden educator and contractor for the school. Guardenier is the founder and director of School Sprouts Educational Gardens, a Belchertown business that provides garden education programs through collaboration.
The students spent a sunny day in January planting seeds inside the greenhouse. Those seeds are close to yielding the season’s first produce.
“They walked out, bundled up in their clothes, came in here, and immediately had to take their jackets off,” said Guardenier, who said the temperature was about 22 degrees outside but 50 in the greenhouse. “The sun makes all the difference,” she said.
Anne T. Dunphy School and the former Helen E. James School, which were combined in 2014, have had vibrant gardening programs since 2003, but the addition of a greenhouse is a more recent development. The structure was raised in October of 2014 at the combined Dunphy School, but was not used for growing food until spring of 2015.
“After the gardening program was integrated into every class, teachers and students wanted a space they could use for gardening into the colder months,” said Sally Loomis, a school parent and chairwoman of the school gardening program, which is a subcommittee of the parent teacher organization. “Before that we had grow lights and dirt in classrooms. It always felt like a patchwork system and it was messy.”
Loomis partnered with then kindergarten teacher Sherrie Marti to organize fundraising for the project. Marti is now a speech and language pathologist at the school. Many school and community volunteers, including The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, The Plant People, Williamsburg Farmers Market, Florence Savings Bank, Williamsburg Beautification Fund, Williamsburg General Store, Brewmaster’s Tavern and Elbow Room Coffee, came together to raise $24,000 to cover the costs and provide physical support for the construction.
“It was a true barn-raising effort,” said Loomis, who noted that the structure went up in one weekend. “The community really rallied around the idea.”
Now in its second growing season, the 18-by-24-foot greenhouse serves as mission control for the school’s gardening initiatives.
The structure is not heated, but has double walls made of polycarbonate, which helps to keep in heat. Thermostatically controlled vents keep the house from getting too warm.
“The raised beds were designed by sixth-graders to get an entire class around them,” said Guardenier. “It’s a space for students to take the work they’re doing in their classroom outside, into a living space, and actually see all of those concepts applied. Instead of just reading books and talking about concepts, you can actually bring them to life.”
Guardenier said students are learning about measurements by seeing the impact of their structural designs, connecting with science concepts by learning about the different layers of soil, and gaining an in-depth knowledge of nutrition and connection to their food, which is essential from a public health standpoint.
“When you grow it yourself, you know that it’s good,” said fourth-grader Tatum Hathaway, 9, of Williamsburg. “I like finding new plants I haven’t seen before and learning how to treat all the different plants.”
When asked to list what has previously grown in the school gardens, Guardenier laughed and responded, “Almost everything. We have perennial herbs, asparagus, sunchokes, Asian pears, peaches, rhubarb, strawberries, raspberries, honey berries, sorrel, carrots, beans, popcorn, garlic, onions, beets, squash, cucumbers, greens, herbs for tea, and more.”
The food from the garden is transported through double doors 25 feet from the greenhouse and right into the school kitchen. Some of the food is also prepared for the school’s Harvest Feast, an annual meal that completes the cycle of food production.
The multiple applications of gardening concepts are so important to the school and community that Anne T. Dunphy School’s gardening initiatives are now fully funded by the town and School Committee as a budgeted part of the school curriculum. Catherine Sands, director of Fertile Ground, which was formed as the school’s gardening curriculum, originally brought in funders and found a variety of ways to help the program become self-sustaining. By the 2014-15 school year, the program was fully supported within the curriculum.
“It was a really important systems change because it meant that the program could go on after I stopped raising money,” said Sands, whose children have since graduated from the school. “Gardening is now embedded in the culture of the school, as well as in the town’s school structures and policies.”
Sands noted that this model is important for other schools and towns to see.
“It’s good that we can come outside and have a break from math class and get to garden,” said Hathaway. “It’s sort of like recess, except not. It’s something to look forward to.”
Sarah Crosby can be reached at scrosby@gazettenet.com.