"pay it forward"

Carver Elementary School in Greenville, Texas, put the word out last year that they intend to develop an outdoor Science Lab behind the school.  Hopefully, it will involve some square foot garden plots, a pond, a weather station, and a butterfly garden.  The bad news is there is no money for science for the schools!  Carver must beg for every dollar for every item they will need from the community.  So far, $1,500 has been raised to erect a fence (the first step).   Next year, we’d like to help them apply for their own Orange Thumb grant from Fiskars!

We decided to partner with Carver and help with the plans for their garden.  One of the fundraising ideas we came up with is to collect bureau drawers from dumpsters and garage sales.  We’ll drill holes in the bottom of each drawer for drainage, fill the drawer with potting soil, and divide the drawer into 2 or 3 sections with string.  We’ll sell the completed “individual square foot garden kit” with some packets of easy-to-grow seeds.  (You can see a picture of the square foot drawers in Picture #9296.)   We’re thinking moms and grandmas will love to buy these and get their kids and grandkids started with their very own, portable gardens!

Another idea is to make “garden fairy chairs” to sell or auction off.  (You’ll see a “before” picture in #9296 and #9307)    We’ll look for old chairs at garage sales or thrift shops, punch the seats out of them, paint them, add decals, and sink a peat moss “hanging basket”-type plant where the seat would be.   These really turn out beautiful and are so pretty and unusual in a garden!  (In the picture, we just stuck a basket with 3 plants in it to give the Carver kids an idea of what we plan on doing.)

Since we got a compliment on the Fiskars blog about the pretty stepping stones we featured in one of our earlier blogs, we thought you might also enjoy seeing a smaller stone the children had fun with last week at the Coppell Community Garden JMG class.  (In picture #9262 you can see the cute stone on the right, a couple of (real!) butternut squashes we harvested for the Food Bank on the left, and a variation of a “Plant Person” in the middle.  (We make “plant people” who grow real hair this way:  put a couple of spoonfuls of ryegrass seed into the tip of a knee-high pantyhose.  Fill with a couple of cups of potting mix.  Tie tightly, decorate to make a face, and put the “wick” (bottom part) of the hose in a glass half full of water, after you soak the whole head well.  The wick will draw water up into the plant person’s head and grow the greatest head of green hair you’ve ever seen!  You can braid it, make ponytails, cut it, etc.  In the picture here, someone made a caterpillar but we’ll have to figure out how to position it to take up its ongoing water supply.  Cute, no?)

From another suggestion we got from the Fiskars’ blog, we’ve begun talking about introducing some of the fresh vegetables we grow and harvest to the rest of the kids in our school in the fall.  Since the Tilling Tigers’ garden isn’t as big as the Coppell kids’ gardens, we’ll have to do it slowly:  maybe one class at a time.  We think we could help other children learn about better nutrition if we can “spread the good word” to the kids not lucky enough to participate in the JMG program.

In Picture #9297, the Carver kids have just received their Orange Thumb T-shirts.  Carver is an inner-city Title I school.  Almost all of the children at Carver are on the free lunch program.  The children were very happy to receive the T-shirts.  (The teacher confided to us that the Orange Thumb shirt will probably be a regular part of the boy’s after-school wardrobe, as he doesn’t seem to have more than his school clothes to wear.)

In the same picture, you’ll also see that the children have received personal letters with their new shirts, with a picture of a Tilling Tiger kid.  The letter says how excited we are to be “rooting” for Carver and Carver’s garden plans.  We enclosed a packet of wildflower seeds they took home with them, and each child got a 4” pot with soil and began growing radishes the same day.  (Some of us adults who work with kids who garden have the children make a garden-theme notecards with a greeting in Spanish for needy children in Spanish-speaking countries that we adults distribute when we’re on humanitarian mission trips to South and Central America.  Sometimes it’s the first time the children there have received a photo of anyone.  The idea has been so successful that we now try to do it on all the projects we do when our kids are involved with kids from other schools or groups.)  In Picture #9311, you’ll see a sample of a picture each Carver child will glue onto a letter for each of the newest fifth grade Tilling Tigers who will be starting their 2008/2009 JMG program in September.

In Picture #9307, despite the heat, the Carver kids love working with the nifty Fiskars tools as they “break ground” for their future garden.

The Carver kids show off their new duds in front of the school playground in

#9323.  Thanks, Fiskars, for helping to make gardening and Science so much fun!

P.S., we’d love to hear others share their ideas for community fundraising!