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Poway Valley Garden Club helps school gardens bloom

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Two elementary schools in Poway and Rancho Bernardo are enjoying the fruits of the Poway Valley Garden Club’s labor.

Painted Rock and Chaparral elementary school students are getting their hands dirty in the school gardens, which were made possible thanks to the hard work of volunteers from the club, along with parents and community members.

The Poway Valley Garden Club also advises and works with school gardens at Rolling Hills Elementary School in Rancho Penasquitos and Innovation Academy in San Diego.

More than just a place to grow flowers, the school gardens offer the students a chance to explore nature and biology in a hands-on way and even sample the fruits and vegetables they help grow.

The garden at Chaparral was the idea of third grade teacher Nancy Bellinghiere-Hall, said Joelle Kohn, who is Chaparral’s garden coordinator and a member of the Poway Valley Garden Club.

“She felt that children at Chaparral needed healthier lifestyles and needed to understand nutrition,” said Kohn.

Kohn has three children who attend Chaparral and originally started as a parent volunteer with the garden before becoming its coordinator. Her work with it and PVGC volunteers inspired her to join the club.

Chaparral’s garden opened about a year ago, with six raised beds created from donations from local companies and the help of PVGC’s Co-President Roy Wilburn, who also advises Sunshine Care on horticulture.

“We started with Sunshine Care, and have extended our work to schools,” said Wilburn. “We offers plants and the advice needed to get started.”

Chaparral’s garden is like an outdoor classroom, said Kohn. “Teachers bring their classes out and do rotations in the garden on conservation, focusing on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics). They do math projects about the garden, engineering, as much as you can do outdoors,” she said.

The garden recently had two more raised beds added to it and volunteers are working to clean up a native trail located behind the school to be used by students by the end of the next school year. Local native plants will be planted along the trail and with the help of Eagle Scouts, plaques explaining the trail and the plants will be installed.

The garden is kept open at recess so kids can do chores, which has been very successful, said Kohn. “It gives kids lacking social skills something to do at recess,” said Kohn, “and it’s great for helping them make friends and build self-esteem.”

Painted Rock has a similar garden setup to Chaparral, with six raised beds within a fenced-in area to keep animals out, said Tammy Harmon, the garden coordinator for Painted Rock.

At Painted Rock, the garden is opened to the students at lunchtime three days a week, where they can help water, weed, plant and harvest the crops grown in the garden. They also help make announcements to the school about the garden.

Harmon said the school is working with teachers to have classes come in and help more with the garden and are also working to plant more drought-friendly plants on the school’s campus in place of grass.

Harmon, a landscape designer with a degree in horticulture, said she works in the school garden because she has a passion for it. She said she was surprised to find that Southern California schools generally don’t have gardens, as she moved from Northern California where most schools had their own gardens.

Both schools sell the produce from the gardens about once a month at the Poway farmer’s market in exchange for donations, but Kohn said Chaparral is looking to incorporate the produce into the school’s cafeteria in a “garden to plate” program. “We’re hoping to be a model school for others,” said Kohn.

Wilburn said the PVGC’s involvement with school gardens began last year after starting a youth gardening club, leading to the club and its members working with the current four schools.

“We donate money (to the school gardens), but we have members living in those gardens,” said Wilburn. “Our members donate their time and energy to keep these gardens going.”

Wilburn said 16 additional schools around the Poway Unified School District have expressed interest to the PVGC in starting gardens on campus. “We’re taking it slowly and learning along the way,” he said. “We’re helping as many as we can in the area.”

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