PLANTING TOMATOES, SERVICE AND A SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Teachers and students at La Salle have found another way to learn and it’s happening in a community garden built on campus, in a spot that used to house bleachers and the baseball field.

The suggestion of building a community garden had bounced around La Salle for years, but when COVID forced everyone home, students in the Eco-Committee club finally kickstarted the project in January of 2021.

Teachers Rand Laird and Kate Williams served as advisors for the students, guiding them in coordinating volunteer shifts, tilling soil, building garden boxes and planting seeds. Both teachers witnessed a sense of community blossom as students labored to work the soil, make compost and sow their first plants together. “This project was a time and space for healing,” Mrs. Williams said. “The students were able to interact with each other for the first time in months in person (socially distanced of course), and create something from the ground up that could be used for years after graduation,” she added. Mr. Laird made one thing clear to the students - he would help lead the effort in building and setting the garden up, but the students would need to keep it going, emphasizing that the garden would be a community asset.

The project presented a number of opportunities for learning. Mr. Laird used a technique called square foot gardening, so the students learned how to leverage a one foot by one foot plot to grow the same amount of produce as would ordinarily take up to eight feet to grow. Given Pasadena’s semi-arid Mediterranean climate, water is precious, so students also learned that square foot gardening allows for the most efficient use of water to produce edible crops.

Moments of laughter and much needed lightheartedness punctuated the building process as students and teachers worked the soil. “There were a few lightbulb moments when our students used power tools for the first time,” Mrs. Williams recounts laughing. “I wanted to be sure our girls especially felt confident in the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) aspects of the project,” she added.

From an environmental science and stewardship perspective, students learned about the importance of crop rotation as a sustainable model for creating healthy soil. What one plant takes from the ground, another type of crop will replenish in its place. Students also learned that partnering fragrant plants like onions, marigolds and geraniums with crops can keep insect invaders at bay, preserving tomatoes and greens for human consumption. Even better, the garden is a welcoming bio-diverse home for local butterfly and insect populations, which in turn, make the garden healthier over time.

To date, students have grown carrots and several kinds of tomatoes like Beefhouse, Cherry and Roma varieties. They’ve also grown Swiss Chard, collard greens and arugula, okra, peas, beans, radishes, strawberries, herbs, cilantro, chives and parsley.

The garden has been as educational for students as it has been an opportunity to serve each other and the environment. “There was a collective effort [in building the garden] and reaping the rewards that builds a community, and teaches kids the skill for the future. There’s a sense of service and that we’re protecting something bigger than us, by producing our own food right at our back door,” he said.

Science teacher Ms. Mullen knows the garden has impacted her students for the better. They delight when they realize they are welcome to pick a carrot and eat it or take it home for dinner. Sometimes her students ask for meditative time in the space. "Ms. Mullen we just need to sit in the garden for 20 minutes,” a student told her once.

The future of the garden is in question, Ms. Mullen said, because it sits on space that might be used for another project as a part of the school’s Strategic Plan. But she feels the garden will exist in one way or another on La Salle’s campus because of all the good she’s seen come from it. “I want to keep a space of the garden for the environmental science class. A place where students can get their hands in the dirt, experience the growing [process] and learn to cook something new. Some of them never want to eat chard again but some of them love it,” she said.