TAKE ONE
Gardener News
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October 2021
GARDENERNEWS.COM
TAKE ONE No. 222
A Children’s Garden Begins with Just One Seed…
Tom Castronovo/Photos
By Diana Dove Environmental Educator Gardener News A school garden is an exciting place to learn and can have a profound positive effect on children. Creating a school garden
was the focus of a sixth-grade community service project. Nearly 25 years later, it has become much more than originally envisioned. When networking with the community, this all-volunteer, educational school project grew into a not-for-profit, award-winning pollinator garden known as the Karen Nash Memorial Butterfly
Garden (KNMBG.) You will find the garden in front of Memorial Elementary School, in Washington Borough, Warren County, N.J. It’s nestled inside the heartshaped circular driveway at the school’s entrance. A quarter-acre grassy slope has been transformed into critically important pollinator habitat. It’s available to classes as an
outdoor learning lab encouraging outdoor-based lessons. The public visits the garden on weekends or after school. In the 1996-97 school year, the sixth graders of Memorial School were to complete a community service requirement. Starting a school garden was suggested. At the time, I was a sixth-grade
parent, attending a Washington Borough PTO (Parent Teacher Organization) meeting. A teacher asked for parent volunteers to start a school garden…I raised my hand. I founded the garden’s volunteer planning committee, which met in October 1996 and formulated a plan of action (Cont. on Page 11)