By Bethany Cambeis
MIDDLETOWN – Middletown High School South’s Environmental Club is cultivating a community garden with plans to enrich the school and the community.
With the help of a $2,000 grant from the Whole Kids Foundation, a nonprofit corporation within Whole Foods Market, the club was able to start its garden project. “The goal of this garden is to immerse students into an experience that will awaken their inner desire to understand where the food that they eat comes from,” said Kevin Sullivan, Middletown South’s Environmental Club advisor and science teacher.
The community garden will improve education skills and awareness of the benefits of healthy eating, as well as life skills of independence, ownership and stewardship for the students involved.
“With a core group of senior members and eager enthusiastic newcomers we plan to make this garden to not only benefit our school but the community as a whole,” said James Sabatino, club member and a senior at South.
South’s Environmental Club plans to donate the crops grown to local food banks; there is also talk of incorporating the food grown into culinary arts and nutrition courses held at the school.
“The drift away from our agricultural roots needs to be stopped and future generations need to be exposed to how healthy, organic food is grown in the United States,” said Sullivan. The garden will not only benefit the school’s curriculum but also introduce the ideas of farming, environmental and health issues, and economical benefits to other students.
The Environmental Club has taken the initiative to reach out to local businesses for help and donations along this process. For example, Sullivan mentions Paul Molzon from Molzon Landscape Nursery in Lincroft as an active community partner. Molzon has already donated plant material, soil, gardening supplies, fertilizers and tools, and promises to continue to help with the continuing project.
Using grant money, the club has purchased 30 raised beds for the garden which they plan to stack atop of each other to create further depth and a more appealing look. “Aside from gardening, [students] will be involved in designing, planting, working in corporative groups, learning about science and nature, creating art and stories inspired by the gardens they would have helped build and maintain,” said Sullivan.
AP Environmental Science students and members of the Environmental Club are both responsible for the garden’s upkeep in the summer months, and club members pledge to take care of the garden and ensure the program’s success after school.
Students not involved in the club or an environmental science class will also be able to benefit from this project: art students are able to help design garden additions, build birdfeeders, and add creative ideas to integrate recycled materials. History students can examine topics of Agricultural Revolution, Green Revolution, the invention of pasteurization and refrigeration, and GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Math students could discuss finance decisions for the garden, as well as application rates and soil analyses. English students can aid in publicizing the Environmental Club’s community garden project through brochures and letters to community, school, and state leaders in hopes of raising awareness. Physical Education classes will be made aware of the nutritional influences eating healthy and local benefits the body’s athletic potential. Geography classes can focus on soil science, soil fertility, the influence of altitude and latitude on arable zones, and rain shadow effect. Psychology students may be curious about the effects of what we eat, and the comparisons of how we feel in contrast to that.
Students and the community will also realize the economic benefits of home gardening in relation to buying produce at supermarkets, or going out to eat.
Members are looking forward to a blooming spring crop.
