Guest column: Kids grow green thumbs to make pollinator garden

Thanks to the help of many folks (mentioned below), kindergarten and first- and second grade-classes had the opportunity to participate in building a huge pollinator garden at the Hartje Center.

Soac has had a pumpkin/gourd garden (called the secret garden because it is a bit hidden out at the Hartje Center) for several years but this year, thanks to a call from Becky Green at Mirror Lake State Park and Prairie Garden Center (who was providing a kit of sample prairie pollinators), soac decided to transform the pumpkin/gourd garden into a pollinator garden. This seemed like a much more educational use of the garden and also it provided a unique experience for participating classes to raise some of the plants in their classrooms and then bring them on a (real) field trip to the Hartje Center and plant them in their own space.

Thanks to Justine Bula and her elite team of garden warriors from the county and cooperating agencies, we were able to revamp not only the old garden but also my naïve ideas of what I thought would be needed. Hankscraft was in the process of ridding their storage area of hundreds of cardboard boxes, which was exactly what was recommended to lay on the ground to prevent old standby weeds from coming up in our pollinators. Then, Steve Zibell and his great crew at our City brought two truckloads of compost and two truckloads of wood chips out to be used to enrich the soil and provide walk ways to each separate plot. Spreading the soil and the cardboard and wood chips was shared by several of Mr. Drew Lockwood’s class members from the high school. Mr. Lockwood also helped us use the high school greenhouse to grow extra plants for those whose plants did not grow in the classroom. Each class was provided garden cups, a variety of pollinator seeds, dirt and a flat to keep all of the pots in until they were planted. Around the end of May, classes began coming to the garden and claiming their space, planting their flowers and then watering them. Jen Maggio-Laack (soac leader) has provided milkweed seeds and toilet paper rolls (just the cardboard) for putting the milkweed seeds in and keeping them separate from the weeds.

Thanks to all the teachers (23 classes were involved) who participated.

Thanks to all who helped with this project and still continue to help. Sara Lancaster and her son Luke have volunteered to help with weeding. Most of the plants have survived the draught with short drinks of water each day.

This has certainly been a community project!

Gary Williams is head of soac.