Garden of
Learning Students get hands-on lessons in the field at Summit Charter School
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Story and photos by Jessica Webb
ave you ever wondered about how many seeds come in a pumpkin or what leads to them turning orange when they are ripe? If you have a pumpkin question, one of the best local sources would be to ask a second-grader at Summit Charter School. The students have a lesson focused on the plant every fall, and this year introduced a new component of growing pumpkins in their school garden. “We started the educational gardens three years ago. The pumpkin patch is a new initiative we planted last spring,” said Summit director Jack Talmadge. Summit Charter School, a kindergarten through eighth grade school in Cashiers, has incorporated lessons from health to science into the garden. The garden has nine different components, and each class takes care of different sections of the garden each year. The garden includes an apple orchard, blueberry bushes, a bird habitat garden, an insect garden, an ozone garden, a terraced garden and three raised bed gardens. The excessive amount of rain that the area has seen this year hasn’t made for the most productive garden this year. Unfortunately, the growth of the pumpkin patch was impeded by the excessive rain. Some sections of the garden are in their early stages, such as the apple orchard. While a few apples have been harvested, they are still small. The crop from the blueberry bushes has been plentiful, and the students will be able to harvest sweet potatoes soon. “There are plenty of flowers, but we haven’t seen full development of a pumpkin yet. But we’re hopeful. The kids have had fun with it,” Talmadge said. One of the raised bed gardens is planted in the Cherokee traditional three sisters with corn, beans and squash. The three
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Leaf Season • 2013